The query at this time comes from Raoof, who asks:
“I fully misplaced my web site because of monetary disputes with the internet hosting firm. I’ve no backup and the one factor I’ve left is a website.
I’m at the moment making ready a brand new web site with the earlier content material and theme. Can I take advantage of the earlier area or not? What’s your suggestion?”
This can be a tough, however not unusual, concern to face. You invested time, cash, and assets in creating your web site. To lose it’s extremely irritating.
From an web optimization perspective, it would really feel like all is misplaced – the topical authority, the backlinks, your high-performing content material.
However don’t fear, it’s not! I’m going to take you thru a number of steps to get better as a lot of your web site and former rankings as potential.
I see no concern with reusing your previous area handle for the recovered web site. That’s, so long as no different web site was hosted on it whereas yours was down.
Should you owned the area identify all through this time, you have to be wonderful to revive your web site at that handle.
Actually, I’d extremely advocate it to make sure you recapture as a lot of your previous web site’s authority as you’ll be able to.
Recovering Your Belongings
Step one is to get better as a lot of your present web site as you’ll be able to. You may not have a backup of your web site, however fortunately, the web does!
Content material
I’d begin by going to the Wayback Machine. That is primarily a non-profit archive of the web.
It claims to have saved over 928 billion webpages. There’s a excessive probability that a few of these will probably be yours!
You may seek for your web site area and scroll again by means of time to when screenshots of your pages had been taken. That ought to allow you to repeat and paste some, if not all, of the copy that was in your web site.
I’d additionally recommend taking a look at your analytics program to determine what your top-visited content material was. This ought to be what you look to get better or recreate first.
Authority
The excellent news with nonetheless having your web site area is that you’ll nonetheless have the chance to get better backlinks that had been pointing to your pages.
It’s necessary to host your content material on the identical URLs because it beforehand was. Which means in case you nonetheless have hyperlinks pointing to your web site from exterior sources, they are going to proceed to work whenever you set the URL reside once more.
In case you are unable to recreate the precise URL for some purpose, be sure to implement a 301 redirect from the previous URL to the brand new one to retain the worth of these hyperlinks.
Reclaim Previous Backlinks
In case your web site went down in the course of the internet hosting dispute, your webpages had been more likely to return a 404 or different non-200 standing code.
This might imply that exterior publications selected to vary their hyperlinks from pointing to your web page to a different in order to nonetheless allow their guests to succeed in usable content material.
This doesn’t imply that these hyperlinks are gone endlessly. Consider which hyperlinks had been misplaced in the course of the area points utilizing a backlink analytics instrument, and start reaching out to these publications to tell them that your content material is again.
It could be that they select to hyperlink to your content material once more over the newer content material they discovered.
Hyperlink Constructing To Assist Crawling
Exterior hyperlinks aren’t simply useful for signaling relevancy and authority; they will additionally assist to encourage the search bots to crawl the content material they hyperlink to.
In case your web site has been offline for some time, it’s potential that the bots have lowered their frequency of crawling. New backlinks may point out that the web site is price crawling extra ceaselessly once more.
Technical
There may be extra to restoring your web site to its former glory than simply recovering the previous content material, after all.
A big a part of what makes an internet site well-optimized for search engines like google and yahoo and people alike is its technical basis.
Similar Structure
The place potential, attempt to recreate the web site’s structure.
I’ve already talked about attempting to re-use the previous URLs, but in addition contemplate how and the place they linked to one another.
Use the identical menu construction and anchor textual content. It will assist reinforce the relevance of the pages to one another and exhibit that the positioning is similar because it was earlier than.
Submit To Be Crawled
When you’ve acquired your web site again to the way it was, it would be best to let the various search engines know to crawl it once more.
Apart from encouraging crawling by getting new backlinks, as already talked about, you’ll be able to submit a request in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Instruments for his or her bots to recrawl particular person pages. Notice that you could be have to confirm possession of the area in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Instruments once more.
Select a few of your extra necessary pages in order that they get crawled and again into the indexes as quickly as potential.
XML Sitemaps
You must also be sure you have arrange XML sitemaps once more for the pages that you’ve recovered.
Submit these to the search consoles to additional inform the Google and Bing bots of your pages’ existence, to allow them to crawl them and see that they’re reside once more.
Take Notice Of Any Points Discovered
As the various search engines start to recrawl the positioning, be aware of any points Google and Bing report on by means of their search consoles.
There could also be new points which have crept in in the course of the rebuild of your web site that weren’t there earlier than.
Enhance
You should utilize this as a possibility to judge what was working along with your web site and what wasn’t.
The temptation is perhaps to get better and rebuild the positioning to mirror its former state. Nevertheless, you would possibly discover that you would be able to really enhance it as a substitute.
What Had been You Rating For
As you overview your previous content material’s efficiency, check out whether or not it ranked effectively earlier than it was misplaced.
It could be that, as a substitute of recovering it and importing it precisely because it was earlier than, you should use this as a possibility to enhance its relevancy to the search phrases customers would use to land on it.
Overview opponents’ content material that has been flourishing whereas yours has been misplaced. Be aware of what the top-ranking content material incorporates that your recovered content material doesn’t.
What’s Modified In The Business
In case your web site has been down for some time throughout this internet hosting dispute, then the business could have moved on.
Begin to search for gaps within the content material that your web site used to deal with and what customers are searching for now.
Are there new developments, merchandise, or companies which might be turning into well-liked in your business that you haven’t coated along with your web site beforehand?
Defend
Crucial step upon getting recovered and improved your web site is to scale back the chance of shedding it sooner or later.
You’ll hopefully by no means have a problem along with your internet hosting once more, however different points can happen that may trigger your web site to go offline.
Backups
To begin with, take backups of your new web site. Many content material administration methods make it straightforward to do that, but when yours doesn’t, or in case you’ve constructed it your self, contemplate what it can save you offline.
Save Your Content material
Take copies of all of the written content material in your web site. Just remember to reserve it someplace that isn’t straight linked to your web site in case you run into points once more.
Don’t overlook to avoid wasting copies of the photographs you utilize, particularly if they’re distinctive to your web site.
Save Your Meta
Take copies of every web page’s SEO.
For instance, obtain the web page title and outline alongside your predominant physique content material.
Mark up the headers and save the picture descriptions, and preserve the filenames as you used on the positioning. It will velocity up the restoration of your web site sooner or later.
Save Your Schema Markup
Don’t overlook to take copies of any bespoke code you used. This contains schema markup. This might prevent plenty of time sooner or later, particularly in case you write your personal schema fairly than utilizing plugins.
This could additionally assist if you find yourself migrating from one CMS to a different that doesn’t use the identical schema modules.
Resuming Your Optimization Efforts
It’s horrifying to assume that the web site you could have spent a lot time on is gone for good. Fortunately, it’s in all probability not.
It’s price contemplate that there could also be authorized recourse obtainable to you to assist within the restoration of your web site.
Be sure that to examine your internet hosting phrases of service completely, as they might give avenues you’ll be able to discover to regain management of your content material.
It is probably not so simple as asking your internet hosting supplier for help in case you are already in a authorized dispute with them, however there could also be some authorized choices obtainable to you.
Sooner or later, it is very important contemplate the trustworthiness and ranges of help offered by your internet hosting supplier.
Search for critiques of potential internet hosting companies earlier than committing to them to be sure you don’t find yourself going by means of an identical wrestle once more.
Shedding entry to your web site could be expensive in phrases of time and cash, and a extremely traumatic state of affairs. However, comply with the steps above and you need to get again to working in your web site.
Extra Assets:
Featured Picture: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
