Keeping PageRank on Newly Acquired site

site recently acquired, how to prevent PR loss?

[usedagain]

I recently acquired a site from pre-release with a PR7. The site has lots of backlinks and listings with a good amount of traffic from google search.

I expect there is a fair chance PageRank will drop due to the pre-release vendor putting up the standard page banner of "this site is for sale" with advertising on it. I am wondering if anyone knows how to restore what might be lost confidence from Google due to 30 days of very little content and 404 redirects.

I have copied the old content from archive.org and kept registration at the old registrar with 10 year renewal. My goal is to keep the old links and PR intact as much as possible. It is not a fancy or highly targeted keyword site but I would like to do whatever I can to maintain it right now so I can begin adding some of my own real content later (no this will not become a junk PR7 submission directory).

Does anyone have similar experiences and ideas on how to prevent inevitable Pagerank suicide?

[CWebguy]

Usedagain, the only way you will lose Pagerank, is if you lose backlinks.

[phranque]

in general i would check all the 404s being generated on your server and try to recreate equivalent content at each "correct" url being requested (especially those requested by SE bots).
or provide a 301 permanent redirect for those requested urls to an appropriate new or alternate url.

[JS_Harris]

To maintain your free search traffic google is going to want to see the same content on the same pages (identical uri). If you can accomplish that without stealing content from the previous owner and without having a site that makes no sense (a personal site but the person isn't you for example) go for it.

I didn't mention pagerank because it's irrelevant. Pagerank doesn't mean traffic.

[usedagain]

Thanks to everyone for their thoughts. I don't suspect that too many backlinks will vanish, and either way the number is in the thousands. I could not replicate the old content but did put in my own of relevance and google has indexed it and treated it as good. Don't know how it will fare over a 6 month period but I suspect I will find out over time.

[BradleyT]

Well if you changed or no longer have the old content then you can probably expect a drop.

[ogletree]

Make sure the content is on subject with the old site. You will keep the PR just don't spam or go around telling Google employees what you did. If you register with webmaster tools you will get a list of backlinks to each page. Try to recreate the url's that have backlinks and 301 them to pages on your site or just name one of your pages that page name. Internal links are very valuable and it is worth it to do this.

Buying a website with existing PR and age is a good way to get ranking faster. You can find some good deals on PR6's and up if you keep looking. Just remember to keep close to the subject matter. It does not have to be the same just in the same category.