How to set up a permanent 301 redirect

My website has backlinks for http://chemtopper.com/ as well as http://www.chemtopper.com/. Does it affect its performance. How do I set up a permanent 301 redirect ? Can anyone help.
Thanks

 

put this in your .htaccess

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} .
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^chemtopper\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://chemtopper.com/$1 [R=301, L]

Code (markup):

This will redirect all traffic going to www.chemtopper.com to chemtopper.com. If you want to it work the other way around use this:

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{http_host} ^chemtopper.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.chemtopper.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Code (markup):

 

You can also set preferred domain from your Google Webmaster tools (only for Google bot).

Kailash

 

Thanks superdav. Its great having buddies like you around.