A 301 redirect is the most efficient and spider/visitor friendly strategy around
for web sites that are hosted on servers running Apache (check with your hosting service if you aren't sure). It's not that hard to implement and it should preserve your search engine rankings for that particular page. If you *have* to change file names or move pages around, it's the safest option. If you are unfamiliar with editing your .htaccess file, you should ask your hosting company for help.