I am working on a small multi-language website. Originally, all of the html files were in the top level directory. Each page has an English version and a Spanish version, which are different html files. I would like to put these files in their own subdirectories, en/ and es/, and then redirect the top-level domain to en/index.html (since English will be the default language).
But if I do this using a 301 redirect, won't search engines remove my top-level domain from their indexes? What I want is for users to enter www.example.com and arrive at www.example.com/en/index.html, but I still want www.example.com to show up in the SERPs.
I have no experience with Apache, so I don't know the correct approach for this. I read a little bit about 301 redirects, and it seemed like a possible way to do what I want, but I have no idea if it is the best way.
Am I on the right track here?