HELP - I Want To Transfer My Blog From Root

Hey Guys,

How do I transfer my Wordpress blog from the root of my site to /blog ... Can I just copy and paste the files in that directory? or do I need to set a database etc..

Also, what happens to my rankings and indexed pages?

Just say my main page rank very high for a competitive keyword and I don't want to lose that rank... Do I still retain my rank or not after the change? I will be keeping the same Title tags, description, keywords, keyword density etc.. It's just not going to be a wordpress blog on the homepage but a normal HTML page.

What do you guys think?

To move to another folder you would have to edit your database. I think it's wp-options. Depending on the number of posts on your blog you could move and have the same pages in your root folder. you should be allright, but if you have a lot of posts it would be a lot of work.
You could do a 301 or 302 but I think this will hurt your SERPs.
I wouldn't do it but I am lazy as hell

BTW, I don't want my blog to retain the rank, I was to retain the rank on my new homepage..

I would probably create the most popular pages in a simple html site like you said. after that i would create a htaccess file redirecting all files that do not match my conditions.
something like

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ! ^/popular_page1\.html$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ! ^/popular_page2\.html$
RewriteCond %{http_host} ^[^.]+\.[^.]+$ [nc]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ hxxp://zzz.%{http_host}/folder$1 [r=301,nc]

I am not that good in htaccess files, but i think it would do the trick

xx = tt
zzz = www