Changing site theme completely

[msja]

Hey guys I need your opinion. I purchased a site because I liked the domain. I did NOT buy it for its backlinks or PR. I bought it because the domain is catchy and fits perfectly with my upcoming site.

The site in place at the moment is at least a year old with plenty of backlinks and is PR4. The theme of the site I will be replacing it with is completely different. Once I set up the new site, I will be exchanging links with related sites ASAP.

With all this Jagger talk, what are your thoughts on this? Thanks in advance.

[msja]

Nobody ever changed the theme of their site before? Well, I guess I haven't either--hence my predicament.

My main concern is getting filtered/penalized/sandboxed by Google. Any reason for my concern or am I just paranoid? Your input is greatly appreciated.

[larryhatch]

Is there some way you can smoothy 'transition' from old theme to the new one, or are they completely unrelated?

IF you make a smooth changeover, you could add new links as the old ones wither away.
Add your new pages slowly while deleting old ones. Some old links might persist for a long time.

If you purchased the domain before it expired, there is a small chance the PR might stay unchanged.
More likely, the SEs will see a change of owners and reset things to zero if I have that right.

If PR drops to zero and site goes sandbox, then I would build up from scratch as you planned.
Old residual links won't all go away, those will help you get re-indexed more quickly. -Larry

[msja]

Thanks for your input, Larry. They are completely unrelated and the domain was purchased from the owner so it never expired.

I've decided to just go ahead and put up the new site and see how it goes. Hopefully, everything will be fine.