Hi All,

Hope this is in right place but basically i need a little advice about retaining my search ranking when moving to another URL. I have got a website URL which attracts 2000 uniquie visitor a day, but a while back this url got banned from adsense through no fault of my own, well i suppose it was a bit my fault!! i basically implemented some links in a way that they were similar to the other website navigation, not identical i might add and no more so that many other reputable webistes still do now. I got the email asking me to change them, i then responded asking if simply changing the colour would be enough, to which the google representative said yes. Therefore this is what i did and a week later it was banned. And there does not seem any way to get this changed, whenever i have contatced google I just get the same person saying once a URL is banned thats it, end of...But anyway thats a differmt story.

What i need to do now is get these visitors to the new site but still maintaining my search engine ranking. The only problem is i dont really know how i got such a higher ranking in the first place i just wrote the site for my own purpose and people seemed to find it, top 3 for my main search term and most of the links back to my site are from people unknown to me, forums or code republished with the link included and i know i will not be able to get them changed to the new URL. Currently i am just offering various links from the old url to the new one which people can click on, but this is only capturing 500ish a day.

I know the best way is to do a 301 redirect via my htaccess file but if i do this and dont get the same links coming to the new site i will have lost all these visitors so i need to get this right first time. At least as it stands i still have the visitors just cant make money from them.

Appologies for such a long message, any ideas about best way forward would be much appreciated!
Cheers
Mart