404 errors after site migration to drupal

I have recently migrated one site to drupal 6.12 from static html. But lot of old site pages got indexed by search engines and and many links from referral sites.

I have gathered all the old files and appropriate new links on the site. But not sure how to re-direct from old page to new page.

I tried
301 /oldlink /newlink in .htaccess file, but seems like it is not working. I also left a message to my server admin, but i want to see if there is any drupal way of doing it. Thanks,

Edit: i noticed path_redirect module, which is working for me. I want to see if there is any easier way. I have over 50 re-redirects to configure.