Recovering Your Website After a Hosting Dispute
Losing your website due to a hosting dispute can be a frustrating and stressful experience. You’ve invested time, money, and resources into creating your online presence, and now it’s gone. However, it’s not the end of the world. You can recover your website and restore its former glory.
Reusing Your Old Domain
If you still own the domain name, you can reuse it for your recovered website. This is a great way to retain the authority and credibility you’ve built up over time. As long as no other site was hosted on the domain while yours was down, you should be fine to restore your site at the same address.
Recovering Your Assets
To recover your website, you’ll need to retrieve as much of your existing content as possible. You can start by visiting the Wayback Machine, a non-profit archive of the internet. With over 928 billion webpages saved, there’s a good chance that some of your content is still available. You can search for your website domain and scroll back through time to find screenshots of your pages.
Content Recovery
Copy and paste the content from the Wayback Machine into your new website. You can also check your analytics program to identify your top-performing content and prioritize recovering those pages first.
Authority Recovery
Since you still have your domain name, you can recover the backlinks that were pointing to your pages. Host your content on the same URLs as before, so that external links will continue to work. If you can’t recreate the exact URL, use a 301 redirect to retain the link value.
Reclaiming Old Backlinks
If your site was down during the hosting dispute, your webpages may have returned a 404 error. This could have caused external publications to change their links to point to other content. Use a backlink analytics tool to evaluate which links were lost and reach out to those publications to inform them that your content is back.
Link Building for Crawling
External links can help search bots crawl your content more frequently. If your site has been offline for a while, new backlinks can indicate that it’s worth crawling again.
Technical Recovery
Recovering your website involves more than just retrieving your old content. You need to rebuild the technical foundation of your site.
Same Architecture
Try to recreate the website’s architecture, including the menu structure and anchor text. This will help reinforce the relevance of your pages to each other and demonstrate that the site is the same as before.
Submitting to be Crawled
Once you’ve recovered your website, submit a request to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to recrawl your pages. You can also encourage crawling by getting new backlinks.
XML Sitemaps
Set up XML sitemaps for your recovered pages and submit them to the search consoles. This will inform the search engines of your pages’ existence and help them crawl your site.
Identifying Issues
As the search engines begin to recrawl your site, take note of any issues reported through the search consoles. Address these issues to ensure your site is optimized for search engines and users.
Improving Your Website
Instead of just recovering your website, use this as an opportunity to improve it. Evaluate what was working and what wasn’t, and make changes to enhance your site’s performance.
What Were You Ranking For
Review your old content’s performance and see if it ranked well before it was lost. Consider improving its relevancy to search phrases and user needs.
What’s Changed in the Industry
If your website has been down for a while, the industry may have moved on. Look for gaps in the content that your site used to address and what users are looking for now.
Protecting Your Website
To avoid losing your website again, take steps to protect it.
Backups
Take regular backups of your site, including content, images, and meta information. Save your backups in a secure location that’s not directly linked to your website.
Saving Your Content
Copy and paste your written content into a secure document, and save your images and other media. Don’t forget to save your page titles, descriptions, and header tags.
Saving Your Meta
Download your page titles, descriptions, and other meta information. This will help you recover your site quickly if you need to rebuild it.
Saving Your Schema Markup
Take copies of any bespoke code, including schema markup. This will save you time if you need to rebuild your site or migrate to a new CMS.
Resuming Your Optimization Efforts
Losing your website can be a setback, but it’s not the end of the world. By following these steps, you can recover your site and restore its former glory. Remember to take steps to protect your website from future losses, and consider seeking legal recourse if necessary.
Conclusion
Recovering your website after a hosting dispute requires patience, effort, and attention to detail. By reusing your old domain, recovering your assets, and improving your website, you can restore your online presence and attract visitors again. Remember to protect your website with regular backups and secure hosting to avoid future losses. With persistence and the right strategies, you can get your website back on track and achieve your online goals.