My client has lost his URL - is there anything he can do to salvage SEO?

[Chammy]

My new client has had his URL for 8 years and built up good SEO, visitors and links. He has now lost it and the cost of getting it back is prohibitive.

Apart from contacting all the places he is currently getting links from, is there anything he can do to salvage SEO and site visitors? Is there anyway he can get 301s done if he no longer owns the URL?

If he starts again with a new URL, and loads all the new content on it, will submitting a site map help Google understand its not duplicate and all the content is just at a new URL?

He is hoping that contacting Google and explaining will help them "look kindly", but I have never heard anything like this happening!

Any ideas?

Many thanks

[AlanMosley]

You mean he has lost his domain name?

He can not 301 a domain he dose not own, he need not worry about duplicate content as the old content will drop out of the index eventualy.

If he still has access to the account in GWMT, he can remove the site, but i would hurry before WMT tries rto validate the site again and finds out it no longer exists

[JamesNorquay]

So he let the domain expire?

You can not contact Google if the domain has expired, all trust will be lost, you can also not 301 re direct a domain you do not physically hold.

What you can try and do is acquire the domain when it comes back onto the market, yet with high competition it may cost a fair amount, especially if the domain is a good generic term & has 8 years age.

[ShaMenz]

Hi Chammy,

With no other information on how he came to "lose" it, I would say his only hope is if he still has access to the Google Web Master Tools account, but he would have to act NOW, in the hope that the new domain owner is slow in getting things organized.

The process:

1. Purchase a new domain
2. Upload all content and ensure that site is ready to go as soon as new domain resolves
3. In Google Webmaster Tools, create a Site account for the new domain & verify it
4. In your old Webmaster Tools Site account, notify Google that the site has moved to new domain
5. Add a few pages of completely new content to the site on the new domain
6. In the Webmaster Tools Site account for the new domain, use "Fetch as Googlebot" to fetch each of the new pages and up to the maximum 50 most important pages in the site. (If a page is successfully fetched with this feature, you can manually add it to the index.)
7. Find all existing backlinks possible (using Open Site Explorer, Majestic SEO, link: search operator in Google, Bing & Yahoo) and contact as many of those webmasters as possible, advise of the domain change and ask them to correct their links.

As Alan pointed out, the only way that this will work for him is if the new domain owner is slow in setting up a GWMT account and he still has access to his existing account, so basically, he needs to act immediately and pray a lot

Incidentally, if he has already missed out on the opportunity to tell Google about the change of domain he should still follow the steps above for the new domain and try to get the links corrected if he can to get some quick traction where possible.

Hope that helps,

Sha

[Chammy]

Thanks everyone - apart from following up on backlinks, will try the GWMT route and hope for the best!