Hi all…

Just a quick question! We have been operating a website for c3 years now, and have excellent organic search engine exposure for many of our relevant keywords and phrases. We have inbound links from the BBC, and some major national newspapers websites.

I would rather not post the web address publicly, as we have become caught-up in a legal battle over the domain. Whilst we believe we have a extremely strong case, and we have done nothing wrong, we don’t necessarily have the stomach to face it, as the other party has much deeper pockets than us, so the threat of legal costs and losses are just too high!

We are, therefore, faced with the fact that we need to switch domains, and 301 redirect.

Our pages are indexed frequently, so I am hoping that our new domain pages will be fully indexed over the next couple of weeks.

However, if this case goes to Nominet dispute resolution, and we were to lose, we would need to transfer ownership of the domain to this other organisation. Does anyone know what the impact of this could be? I am confident it would remain in place long enough to get all pages indexed, but if it were then removed, I assume we would lose credits for all inbound links to the site? I fear it could drop down the listings like a stone?! A highly distressing time!

Many Thanks in advance!

Ben

301 redirects (preferably in your .htaccess file) will work fine as long as you control the refering domain.

The problem is that if you lose control of the domain the new owners will most likely remove the redirects so as to retain the inbound link equity for themselves.

The best solution is to contact the websites that are linking to you and ask them to change the links so that they point to your new domain.