Redirecting index.html to the root

[romanbond]

Hi, I was wondering if there is a safe way to consolidate link juice on a single version of a home page. I find incoming links to my site that link to both mysite.com/ and mysite.com/index.html. I've decided to go with mysite.com/ as my main and only URL for the site and now I'd like to transfer all link juice from mysite.com/index.html to mysite.com/
When i tried 301 redirect from index.html to the root it created an indefinite loop, of course.

I know I can use a RewriteRule.., but will it transfer the juice??

Please help!

[Nikos-Kor]

@streamlinemetrics this worked for my site Finbit Solutions, too! Thank you very much!

[salena580]

It works good for my site https://uaedesertsafari.com/

[wideangle]

works, thank you!

[almusammem]

Thank you very much, this works fine with me.

[webfeatus]

Google may see this as a 301 but MOZ crawl does not seem to.
Can you please help explain this?

I am looking for a good .htaccess code for this redirect.

[enxaqueca]

Thank you, Streamline Metrics. I looked everywhere and tried several different edits in my htaccess for a 301 redirect from index.html to root, but none worked. Your code worked wonderfully.

[romanbond]

that seems to be working well. thanks a lot for your help.

[StreamlineMetrics]

If you want to redirect all index.html(s) to their roots, then try this code -

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^index.html$ / [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)/index.html$ /$1/ [R=301,L]

And yes, Google will treat them as 301 redirects so your juice will be transferred and consolidated.

[romanbond]

thanks, that was quick!
A couple of questions before i go ahead and implement it:

will this rule re-direct all index.html(s) to their appropriate roots or will it work just for the home page?
Also, as far as user's expirience is concerned this will take care of redirecting requests to show index.html to the root, but what about the juice transfer. Will Google treat it as 301?

[StreamlineMetrics]

It's definitely a good idea to 301 redirect index.html to your root to consolidate link juice. I am assuming you have an .htaccess file so the following lines should work -

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

redirect html pages to the root domain

RewriteRule ^index.html$ / [NC,R,L]