How to outrank an old URL

[David_Heim]

I'm new to the forum, so apologies if this duplicates another thread.
I belong to a hobby club. A member who had been the club's webmaster recently resigned and disabled our old web site in the process. He managed to maintain control of our old domain names and won't push them to us. We've had to get a new domain name and build a new web site. Right now, the old names outrank the new name on Google, but anyone clicking on the old URL will go nowhere because the old site can't be found. I've optimized the new site. What can I do to try to outrank the old URLs in search, so that people can find our new site?

Thanks in advance for whatever help and advice you provide.

[phranque]

if the site is unreachable it should eventually drop out of the index.
what response do you get to requests?

[NickMNS]

Another thing you can do, which can be very labor intensive (but highly effective), is to find all or as many links as you can pointing to the old website, then ask the owner of the linking site to change the link to point to your new website. This will likely not be possible for all the links, but if enough of them change and the remaining links are dead, then Google will quickly get the signal that the new domain is the replacement for the old one.

[not2easy]

Hello David and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

Since you can't forward visitors to the new site from the old one, maybe you can mention the old site enough for it to be associated with the old site. I don't mean spammy mentions, but as users find the new site, maybe mentioning in greeting something about the old site. If the old domain were live, that would not be helpful, but if Jimmy from OldHobbyClub was mentioned as 'one of our long time friends from OldHobbyClub' it can get picked up. These kinds of changes are slow and unsure.

Do you have any of the old site's content, some member may have an article they shared there and it could be re-posted with edits mentioning the new Club and with a similar looking URL?

[tangor]

@David_Heim ... always happy to have new members!

If disgruntled ex-webmaster has killed the site, your new site will EVENTUALLY rise.

If you have all the original content (you did back it up, right?) put it up under the new domain name. Also won't hurt to have an About Page where you reveal newexample.com is a new branding of oldexample.com. You don't need to say more than that.

If you wrote the content, no worries, you already have the copyright. If you had others contribute to the content of the old site contact them to make sure it is okay to use their stuff again ... or have them send you their original works so you can put it on line ... again.

That said, if ex-webmaster attempts to play with the old stuff withheld from you, file DMCAs with PROOF that ex-webmaster is NOT ENTITLED to that content and is, in fact, an infringer. The knife cuts both ways.

YMMV

Good luck!

[David_Heim]

Thanks, all. Some good suggestions here.
Best,
David

[buckworks]

all the original content (you did back it up, right?)

Sometimes old content can be salvaged from the Wayback Machine [archive.org...]

I know of a similar-sounding situation where a webmaster destroyed years of content. I'm not sure if it was from malice or incompetence but either way it was a major loss to the organization. The Wayback Machine saved the day.

I would second the suggestion to invest some effort to get old links updated. Do you have access to analytics or the search console for the old domain? That would help you identify the best place(s) to start.

[lucy24]

<tangent>
The Wayback Machine is like a tow truck. Everyone hates it ... until the day you need it.
</tangent>

[Robert Charlton]

David, can you give us an approximate time-line....
- How long was the old site down before the new site went up?
- How long has the new site been up?

- Does the new site have any inbound links? Ie, are any sites now in Googles index linking to the new site?
- Is the content on the new site currently the same or different from the content on the old one?

Note that phranque, whose post immediately follows yours, asks a very important question, which would be helpful to have answered....

if the site is unreachable it should eventually drop out of the index.
what response do you get to requests?

We don't know how much you do or don't know about webmastering... so please forgive this explanation if unnecessary... The "response" phranque mentions is not merely what happens as observed by the eye... He's asking about something technically specific... called a "server header response", using a tool called an HTTP Status Code Checker to report on various technical issues that might give us all an idea what the status of the old domain currently is. If you don't know what status codes are, perhaps someone can talk you through how to find and use a code checker.

(I'll be unavailable for most of the rest of the week, but thought I'd jump in with these questions).

Good luck. It's not a nice thing to have happen.