Important: What do businesses fear the most?

What do businesses fear most? A class action lawsuit. Yet many of us are doing something that could cause one, and we don’t even realize it.

Before we begin, I need to preface this by saying that this is not legal advice. You need to contact your lawyer before making any legal decisions.

So what are we doing that could wind us up in hot water? Got E&O? Check. Got cybersecurity insurance? Check. What about letting our domains expire?

Wait. What?

Yup. Let me explain.

When you let a domain expire, you have the following issues.

First, you lose all of your SEO link power from them. That stays with the domain.

Secondly, someone else will most likely register it because it was freshly ended. This is prime real estate for scammers to leverage the site to phish your previous customers/clients. They do that by doing things like using Archive.org’s Wayback Machine to see what your site looked like. After that it’s just a matter of replicating it to make people feel comfortable.

Notify Your Clients

If you’re dropping domains, you might want to send out a mass email to the clients/customers of that site to let them know you no longer own it. Ideally you can tell them to go to a different site you own, or maybe a former competitor if you’ll no longer be in that business.

If you want them to go to a different site, though, you’ll want to do a 301 permanent redirect to the new site for a while from the old domain. This will transfer the link power to the new domain while you watch your analytics to make sure no one is coming to the old domain, and you have time to update your marketing materials based on where they came from when visiting the domain.

If enough of your previous clients get scammed, and the site has your name on it, they’ll try to come after you. Is it fair? No. You’ll actually want to talk to your lawyer about suing the pants off the scammer for everything they did to your business, right before the cops throw them in prison. However, that’s a long, arduous process, that only at the END do you have even a CHANCE at making money on it by taking everything from the scammer.

Protect Yourself

So don’t leave money on the table in the first place. Be careful and make sure that anyone who used that domain has a chance to gracefully learn of the new domain, or at least know you no longer own it. The 30 day grace period for renewing it isn’t going to save you either.

Remember, none of this article is to be considered legal advice. It’s simply something to discuss with your legal team so they can help you make the right decisions for your business.

If you’ve decided to use this information, or you came up with a different plan, Red Scale Corporation is here to help you implement that strategy. We also have numerous free audits you can make use of, such as a FREE Website Security Audit.