We take every possible security precaution to avoid this happening as you dont ever want to see your website showing something that is not appropriate or authorised, unfortunately it does happen and as the following statement shows it can confuse website owners.
We had a previous site using our current domain name which was part of a deal with their main supplier, they fell out with that supplier and the site was subsequently hacked and lots of spurious links attached to unpleasant sites, I have only recently become aware of this when in correspondence with the current webmaster. I was questioning him about our poor rankings and he suggested Google had punished the domain because of the hacking and bad links etc and it may take some time to recover, he has apparently sent an e-mail to Google asking for the site to be reconsidered.
I have done a bit of research into the goings on of Google if they have punished a site/domain, it would appear that it can take a long time to recover naturally, if ever, and as there are thousands of requests for reconsideration (which I believe to be a manual process), this can take many months if not longer. It would also appear there is a thing called ‘the Google dance’ (don’t laugh) where the domain can appear to recover only to fall down the rankings again.
My dilemma is, do we keep the same domain which obviously has a degree of maturity and therefore better in terms of ranking? Or do we start afresh with a domain that has no bad history with Google? If we change the domain can we point the existing one to the new address as all of our current stationary has it on and people are aware of it? Do you or your tech guys know if pointing a domain with some bad history with Google to a new one has any effect on the new one?
I have been told you offer mobile ready websites as you said your clients seem to like them, is it true that your new CMS allow clients to access / edit and develop their mobile website in the same way. If clients search and find the website on a mobile device will they will automatically be directed to the mobile version with the option to view the main site if they wish. Hope this helps, give me a shout if you need any further assistance.
Regarding our website There are a few things I want to change i.e. some of the pictures, it was supposed to fade in and out on the home page instead of scrolling, now that I see the scrolling I think it might actually be sharper and more modern, the scrolling does need slowed down a bit though as it sort of blurs your eyes. We can put some punchy strap lines in the text in the grey strip and make clickable links to the relevant pages. Let me know what you think of the general feel of it. Just really to get your opinion on using our existing Domain.
