Redirects can be done a couple of ways and can be helpful from both a navigation and SEO standpoint. From a navigation standpoint a redirect can automatically forward a visitor from an old or no longer available page to a new or still existing page. From an SEO standpoint using a 301 redirect will allow the search engines to follow the redirect of a moved page and carry with it all of the pagerank and search engine rank that the page had before you moved it.
If you simply want to redirect visitors without worrying about any SEO for the site/page there are a few ways to do this. You can put up a blank page that uses a javascript meta refresh that automatically forwards anyone that finds that page to the page called out in the script. That script would go in the html header and look like this:
<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”2;url=http://www.destinationdomain.com”>
The area that says content =“2; means that the page will refresh two seconds after it loads. You can set that number to anything you want. A zero would mean it would auto refresh and anything above that will be in seconds. The other option is to set your 404 error.html page in htaccess and then just delete the pages you want to redirect. When people hit those pages the htaccess file will auto forward them to the new error.html page. Unless you have a lot of pages to do using the meta refresh is probably the best way to go.
If you want to redirect a page and want to keep the SEO value of the page up then you will want to do what is called a 301 redirect. Search engines spiders see a 301 redirect as a permanent redirect so make sure to use it, not a 302 redirect which the search engines often consider to a be a temporary redirect. Formatting a 301 redirect varies depending on your server and its software. Many server control panels will allow you to set it up right in the panel while others will want you to do it via htaccess. The easiest way to go about properly setting it up would be to contact your hosting company and ask for their advice. If you have worked hard to get a good search engine ranking for some pages within your site you don’t want to lose that just because you need to move them. Using the proper 301 redirect will send visitors to the proper page and it will also ensure that your pages stay ranked in the search engines.