Using 301 redirects to salvage backlinks

[etui342]

My site, lets called it www.mysite.com has backlinks pointing to http://mysite.com and a forum at http://www.mysite.com/forum and http://mysite.com/forum.

I have been concentrating my link building efforts to http://www.mysite.com. I would like to redirect those backlinks pointing to those other url structures all to http://www.mysite.com.

What would the 301 redirect syntax be to accomplish this? Also, do I simply upload the redirect file to the root of my web hosting?

Thanks in advance.

[smith360]

If you renamed or moved pages of your website, a 301 redirect lets you automatically redirect visitors and search engine spiders to your new pages while maintaining your search engine ranking...

[airsidelimo]

@Smith360 already clearly described what exactly 301 redirect is.
this is best you can.