Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Website company closed down, but he's hosted somewhere, that's easy. Contact the hosting company, determine who's being billed for hosting, if it's your client a 5 minute conference call with verification of his credit card on file they let the hosting know you have rights to access by FTP. Done.

Typically it should / would end there UNLESS the site was dynamic - a WordPress, Joomla, Concrete, etomotie, etc site then it get's into issues of accounts and permissions.

Before you think about access think about liability - do you really want DIRECT access? do you want the responsibility of their user name, password and if it's breaks you're the one they blame?

Insurance and contracts

Are you insured if your access accidentally deletes everything? Does your contract state a protection of arbitration if they make claims you deleted, took, added or changed their website?

If the website was a room in strangers house and a pile of cash was left on the table, would you know their character well enough that wouldn't accuse you of theft? Having direct access goes from light dating to marriage, are you ready for commitment?

Before you do anything make a back-up Whttrack is a great program to make a static web backup. Make it for yourself first and foremost because you never know what will happen.

Back up the database, files, images, structure, accounts...everything!

Yes create a Linkedin page AND join groups associated with your services or products, not only does it providing marketing exposure and point-of-contact with perspective clients but also established your authority within your industry.

Use the groups to promote you blog post and pages that answer questions within the groups, use your page and company page to create direct links to your listings. The groups have a social presence and I've seen post and updates made show up in fresh results within Google.

Additionally formatting of the text and links appears to have an effect on the page linked, site reference with italics and quote key terms to show the link is a reference for the body of text you've posted.