Changing hosts, and site content

I am not an expert SEO, but have been reasonably successful in a few diiferent phrases.

Anyway, I have recently struck a deal with someone where they will be in a sense leasing me their domain name, which is 2 years old and is allready ranking well in the SERP's.

A bit of background on what the situation is: The owner of this domain is based in Canada and I am based in New Zealand. The domain is ranking well in the U.S and Canadian google (which is where we want to keep it)

Our plan is that this person keep the domain in their name, and I host the domain (with hostgator) for security and technological purposes. We want to change the content of the site as it is only an information page at the moment, and we deal with e-commerce.


So the question is, how do we do this swap over of hosting and content in a way that we keep our rankings, and will the fact that I will be performing SEO from New Zealand, mean that I will only increase the rankings on NZ google? Our target market is the U.S and Canada, we do not want to jeoporadize the current SERPS.


Any info would be great!

Erm, I *think* it's just one of those try it and see cases... Although if you change the content/hosting I would expect to see a drop in the previous rankings if they aren't what you are targeting.

I would of personally bought a new domain name instead of leasing one... Once the lease is up all your hard work will go to waste - plus a new .com or whatever domain name is like £5 or around that atleast.

yup, I concur. 'leasing' a domain name is NOT the way to go here...you'll end up with nada, IMHO.....investigate using 301's to a new domain name, is what I'd do!



Jim

IMHO you must be mad!

I will give you a domain to use (no lease fee) that already ranks well in Canada and the US and you can build way. Add great content build links add more content and build yet more links.

What is stopping me, or them from taking back control of the domain and cashing in on your work?

Unless that site is ranking for some very very difficult terms then this is a false economy.

I would make an offer to your friend to purchase the domain name.

These types of things often dont end well. Of course all we hear at SEOCHAT are the "bad" stories.

Would you spend thousands remodeling a leased home? or would you be better of investing in something you already own.

Not to mention that the person who currently owns the domain could be paying for the links that rank it well and get them pulled

The main reason I am considering this option is because of the fact that I dont have the time to spend houres and hours linkbuilding, and also due to the fact that I find it unbearably hard to rank on the U.S google, compared with someone based in the states.

This option would allow me to have a domain based and hosted in the states (i would own the hosting account so it would cover me in terms of security).

I suppose I did not really explain myself in regards to the 'leasing' idea, it would be more of a 50:50 ownership of the 'whole' website.