How do I use a 301 redirect?

A 301 redirect is a method of redirecting one web page to another, without losing any of the search engine benefits that page may already have accumulated ? so if your old page is on page 1 of Google, it remains there and people clicking on it are redirected to your new page.

Quite how your redirect is implemented depends on what you are redirecting, where it is, what server you are on etc.  An example redirect is the following ? this would be placed into a PHP file:

<?
header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
header( "Status: 301 Moved Permanently" );
header( "Location: http://www.yournewURL.extension/? );
exit(0);?>

You may want to put one in an .htaccess file too ? this one, for instance, redirects a single page, rather than the entire site:

Redirect 301 /old/old.html http://www.yournewURL.extension/new.html

There are many ways to use 301 redirects ? a quick ?Google? will give you the methods you need to get the redirect you want.