Our client's site was owned by former employee who took over the site. What should be done? Is there a way to preserve all the SEO work?
-
A client had a member of the team leave on bad terms. This wasn't something that was conveyed to us at all, but recently it came up when the distraught former employee took control of the domain and locked everyone out. At first, this was assumed to be a hack, but eventually it was revealed that one of the company starters who unhappily left the team owned the domain all along and is now holding it hostage.
Here's the breakdown:
-Every page aside from the homepage is now gone and serving a 404 response code
-The site is out of our control
-The former employee is asking for a $1 million ransom to sell the domain back
-The homepage is a "countdown clock" that isn't actively counting down, but claims that something exciting is happening in 3 days and lists a contact email.
The question is how we can save the client's traffic through all this turmoil. Whether buying a similar domain and starting from square one and hoping we can later redirect the old site's pages after getting it back. Or maybe we have a legal claim here that we do not see even though the individual is now the owner of the site. Perhaps there's a way to redirect the now defunct pages to a new site somehow? Any ideas are greatly appreciated.
-
If you are sure you want to downrank the old site, you can contact the webmasters linking to it and tell them about your new site. Telling them that there is no content on the old site should also help.
-
I think so too. But in the rare event that a genius out there sees our conundrum and knows a crazy trick, that'd be nice. Some kind of site migration loophole that allows you to map and redirect old URLs without ownership of a site. That's wishful thinking though.
-
what to do in the meantime to preserve the rankings
I think that your only immediate option is PPC.
-
I don't disagree. The legal part is not SEO-related. The SEO question that's posed is what to do in the meantime to preserve the rankings. Bear in mind that there are 2 possible outcomes (getting site back vs. not getting it back and starting fresh) and there's also not necessarily a good solution. Perhaps waiting and starting over is the answer. I don't know.
-
This is a question for attorneys rather than SEOs.
I would go get legal assistance. From my experience, it usually costs less than you fear.
-
Someone's squatting on that one. Perhaps we can try to buy that one somehow now that the opportunity presented itself...
-
Ouch, then yeah, I really doubt there is anything you guys can do about that. I say try to get fully matching brand name domain now, if possible
-
I phrased the question incorrectly originally. Turns out the guy owned the domain all along and during his exit no one had him sign the rights over. He took full advantage of it. Definitely a blunder.
The domain name is only a partial match of the brand name. It's [brand's name]blah.com so probably won't hold up in court or at least won't be an open and shut case.
Thanks so much for the input, Dmitrii. Greatly appreciated.
-
Hi there.
There are not many ways for you to get the domain back:
- Buy it from current owner;
- If the domain name is complete match of company's name or company's product, and this name is trademarked/copyrighted, you can get the domain back through court, since it would be a domain squatting by former employee.
But, if there is no trademark and domain was purchased legally - I believe there is no way for you guys to get it back, but buy it from that guy.
P.S. Why didn't you have on automatic renewal?!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Best Web-site Structure/ SEO Strategy for an online travel agency?
Dear Experts! I need your help with pointing me in the right direction. So far I have found scattered tips around the Internet but it's hard to make a full picture with all these bits and pieces of information without a professional advice. My primary goal is to understand how I should build my online travel agency web-site’s (https://qualistay.com) structure, so that I target my keywords on correct pages and do not create a duplicate content. In my particular case I have very similar properties in similar locations in Tenerife. Many of them are located in the same villa or apartment complex, thus, it is very hard to come up with the unique description for each of them. Not speaking of amenities and pricing blocks, which are standard and almost identical (I don’t know if Google sees it as a duplicate content). From what I have read so far, it’s better to target archive pages rather than every single property. At the moment my archive pages are: all properties (includes all property types and locations), a page for each location (includes all property types). Does it make sense adding archive pages by property type in addition OR in stead of the location ones if I, for instance, target separate keywords like 'villas costa adeje' and 'apartments costa adeje'? At the moment, the title of the respective archive page "Properties to rent in costa adeje: villas, apartments" in principle targets both keywords... Does using the same keyword in a single property listing cannibalize archive page ranking it is linking back to? Or not, unless Google specifically identifies this as a duplicate content, which one can see in Google Search Console under HTML Improvements and/or archive page has more incoming links than a single property? If targeting only archive pages, how should I optimize them in such a way that they stay user-friendly. I have created (though, not yet fully optimized) descriptions for each archive page just below the main header. But I have them partially hidden (collapsible) using a JS in order to keep visitors’ focus on the properties. I know that Google does not rank hidden content high, at least at the moment, but since there is a new algorithm Mobile First coming up in the near future, they promise not to punish mobile sites for a collapsible content and will use mobile version to rate desktop one. Does this mean I should not worry about hidden content anymore or should I move the descirption to the bottom of the page and make it fully visible? Your feedback will be highly appreciated! Thank you! Dmitry
Technical SEO | | qualistay1 -
Link's that are an internal site search?
Hi hope your're all well. I sell Red, Blue, Green Widgets within each color I have many sub types, the subtypes change all the time,and a sub type has many variations in itself. I'd like to set up links that direct customers to popular searches of sub types say: widgets.com/red/blue-spots....search string... Will Google crawl these search links and see that there is good content behind it? How does Google handle links that are also a site search? Can it be bad and should I "no follow" them? Hope someone can give me some direction on these, many thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | Thea880 -
Anything new if determining how many of a sites pages are in Google's supplemental index vs the main index?
Since site:mysite.com *** -sljktf stopped working to find pages in the supplemental index several years ago has anyone found another way to identify content that has been regulated to the supplemental index?
Technical SEO | | SEMPassion0 -
Should we use & or and in our url's?
Example: /Zambia/kasanka-&-bangweulu or /Zambia/kasanka-and-bangweulu which is the better url from the search engines point of view?
Technical SEO | | tribes0 -
What's the best URL Structure if my company is in multiple locations or cities?
I have read numerous intelligent, well informed responses to this question but have yet to hear a definitive answer from an authority. Here's the situation. Let's say I have a company who's URL is www.awesomecompany.com who provides one service called 'Awesome Service' This company has 20 franchises in the 20 largest US cities. They want a uniform online presence, meaning they want their design to remain consistent across all 20 domains. My question is this; what's the best domain or url structure for these 20 sites? Subdomain - dallas.awesomecompany.co Unique URL - www.dallasawesomecompany.com Directory - www.awesomecompany.com/dallas/ Here's my thoughts on this question but I'm really hoping someone b*tch slaps me and tells me I'm wrong: Of these three potential solutions these are how I would rank them and why: Subdomains Pros: Allows me to build an entire site so if my local site grows to 50+ pages, it's still easy to navigate Allows me to brand root domain and leverage brand trust of root domain (let's say the franchise is starbucks.com for instance) Cons: This subdomain is basically a brand new url in google's eyes and any link building will not benefit root domain. Directory Pros Fully leverages the root domain branding and fully allows for further branding If the domain is an authority site, ranking for sub pages will be achieved much quicker Cons While this is a great solution if you just want a simple map listing and contact info page for each of your 20 locations, what if each location want's their own "about us" page and their own "Awesome Service" page optimized for their respective City (i.e. Awesome Service in Dallas)? The Navigation and potentially the URL is going to start to get really confusing and cumbersome for the end user. Think about it, which is preferable?: dallas.awesomcompany.com/awesome-service/ www.awesomecompany.com/dallas/awesome-service (especially when www.awesomecompany.com/awesome-service/ already exists Unique URL Pros Potentially quicker rankings achieved than a subdomain if it's an exact match domain name (i.e. dallasawesomeservice.com) Cons Does not leverage the www.awesomecompany.com brand Could look like an imposter It is literally a brand new domain in Google's eyes so all SEO efforts would start from scratch Obviously what goes without saying is that all of these domains would need to have unique content on them to avoid duplicate content penalties. I'm very curious to hear what you all have to say.
Technical SEO | | BrianJGomez0 -
Can a Joomla template ruin a sites on-page seo?
Have been looking into a potential clients site that performs really badly, when I took a look in 'googlebot view' I see that every on page link appears- [visit camp26.biz] clients link title as expected insures against a negative affect. But having that as the first two words of every link title/anchor in the eyes of Google would seem to be something to be concerned about? Have tried searching for answers to this online but template providers are so prevelant everywhere I can't find any decent information on this issue. If anyone can throw some light on this for me it will be much appreciated : )
Technical SEO | | steve821 -
404's and duplicate content.
I have real estate based websites that add new pages when new listings are added to the market and then deletes pages when the property is sold. My concern is that there are a significant amount of 404's created and the listing pages that are added are going to be the same as others in my market who use the same IDX provider. I can go with a different IDX provider that uses IFrame which doesn't create new pages but I used a IFrame before and my time on site was 3min w/ 2.5 pgs per visit and now it's 7.5 pg/visit with 6+min on the site. The new pages create new content daily so is fresh content and better on site metrics (with the 404's) better or less 404's, no dup content and shorter onsite metrics better? Any thoughts on this issue? Any advice would be appreciated
Technical SEO | | AnthonyLasVegas0 -
What's the best way to deal with an entire existing site moving from http to https?
I have a client that just switched their entire site from the standard unsecure (http) to secure (https) because of over-zealous compliance issues for protecting personal information in the health care realm. They currently have the server setup to 302 redirect from the http version of a URL to the https version. My first inclination was to have them simply update that to a 301 and be done with it, but I'd prefer not to have to 301 every URL on the site. I know that putting a rel="canonical" tag on every page that refers to the http version of the URL is a best practice (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394), but should I leave the 302 redirects or update them to 301's. Something seems off to me about the search engines visiting an http page, getting 301 redirected to an https page and then being told by the canonical tag that it's actually the URL they were just 301 redirected from.
Technical SEO | | JasonCooper0