Q:  My friend has a site that uses an instant re-direct from the root directory to their online store. Is this a bad thing to do for search engines? Is there anything we can put on the root re-direct page to help boost our search engine crawl, and hence ranking?
John

Hi John, thanks for your question. Simply put, this isn't the best option available. I'm not sure why the store hasn't been set up on the root folder, but you have to work with what you have.

For those of you who don't know what a root folder is, it's the main folder on your server. Your website is made up of files (usually stored in the root folder or main folder). Any folders that are set up on the server and pages reside in them are called sub-folders or sub-directories. For example if you have a file called 'widget.html' stored in a folder called 'products', your URL for that page would look like this:-www.yourwebsite.com.au/products/widgets.html

A re-direct is when you instantly take users from one page to another. Why do people re-direct? Well there are a number of legitimate reasons for a re-direct. For example, if you post a question in a forum you may be instantly re-directed to a thank you page. Other people use re-directs for nefarious purposes, for example they may create a page that has gobbledygook content on it to rank high in search engines, then once this page gets a high ranking, put an instant re-direct on this page to another more useful page.

Whilst this is an older method and search engines have quickly caught onto these types of practices, there is still some danger in using unnecessary re-directs on your website.

What can you do about it? 
If it's a possibility I would be moving the shopping cart component of the store to the root folder. Failing that, I would set up a html index page (basically a homepage) and optimise this for your keyword terms. This will eliminate the need for a re-direct and won't cause any issues.

If you can't do either of these options then I would look at how many pages you have on the site and ensure the number of pages roughly mirrors the amount in the Google index (do this by using site:www.yourwebsite.com.au in a search engine’s search box). If you can't see any adverse effects on getting the site indexed, then it's probably nothing to worry about.