I'm having a look at a friends website (a fairly old PHP based one) which they've been advised needs re-structuring. The key points being:

1. URLs should be lower case and more "friendly".
2. The root of the domain should be not be re-directed.

The first point I'm happy with (and the URLs needed tidying up anyway) and have a draft plan of action, however the second is baffling me as to not only the best way to do it, but also whether it should be done.

Currently http://www.example.com/ is redirected to http://www.example.com/some-link-with-keywords/ using the follow index.php in the root of the Apache2 instance.

<?php
$nextpage = "some-link-with-keywords/";
header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
header( "Status: 301 Moved Permanently" );
header("Location: $nextpage");
exit(0); // This is Optional but suggested, to avoid any accidental output
?>

As far as I'm aware, this has been the case for around three years -- and I'm sorely tempted to advise to not worry about it. It would appear taking off the 301 could:

• Potentially affect page ranking (as the 'homepage' would disappear - although it couldn't disappear because of the next point...)
• Introduce maintainance issues as existing users would still have the re-directed page in their cache
• Following the above, introduce duplicate content
• Confuse Google/other SE's as to what the homepage actually is now

I may be over-analysing this but I have a feeling it's not as simple as removing the 301 from the root, and 301'ing the previous target to the root...

Any suggestions (including it's not worth it) are sincerely appreciated.