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?

[FPD_NYC]

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.

[DmitriiK]

Hi there.

There are not many ways for you to get the domain back:

1. Buy it from current owner;
2. 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?!

[FPD_NYC]

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.

[DmitriiK]

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

[FPD_NYC]

Someone's squatting on that one. Perhaps we can try to buy that one somehow now that the opportunity presented itself...

[EGOL]

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.

[FPD_NYC]

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.

[EGOL]

what to do in the meantime to preserve the rankings

I think that your only immediate option is PPC.

[FPD_NYC]

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.

[DaveGerecht]

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.