I set up a .htaccess file on my website and entered this code:

Redirect 301 /freshbeat.co.uk www.freshbeat.co.uk

As I read that it should improve the SEO of my site. But it just caused an error and Im just presented with this when visiting my site!

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@freshbeat.mattpealingdesign.co.uk and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

I assume I've done something wrong? Do I need to include anything at the top of the .htaccess? Also, my website is located in a sub folder in my hosting account, and I put the .htaccess file in the root of that, i.e. in the same place as where my index.htm file for that website is located.

Kindly remove the existing code in .htaccess and place this code.

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

thanks that seems to have worked! I had read something similar but I was a bit confused about why an ordinary permanent redirect wasn't working? In fact, the permanent redirect seemed to work for a bit, but then I check later on and was given only error messages!

Oh well it works now, cheers