Register all possible domain name variations related to your company name. If your company's name is hard to spell, register common misspellings. Register every domain people might use to find your company. It only costs $24.95 a year to register each domain name, and that's a small expense to keep a customer.

Take this example: Before America Online acquired Time Warner for $178 billion, it registered at least 21 domain names that might be useful to the new company, named AOL Time Warner, from AOLTW.com to AmericaOnlineTimeWarner.com. Alternatively, web sites exist that capitalize on misspellings using them as advertising vehicles and diverting customers from your site.

When users search the Internet for a particular product or service they often search by product or service, rather than business name. To increase the chances of having your site found, register extra domain names that relate to your core business or products. If you owned the hypothetical company name of Widgets & Widgets co. but you sold an array of household products, you could register generic domain names relating to all aspects of household goods. You may be too late to snap up obvious domain names such as detergent.com or vacuum.com, but a little creative thinking into alternatives can be lucrative. These alternative domains can be easily linked to your main web site.

Ensure someone else has not trademarked the name you register. You cannot register names already registered as copyright (for example, McDonalds"). Like company names, domain names are unique and cannot be duplicated. Avoid registering domain names that are similar to your competition or to famous trademarks. Businesses have lost their rights to registered domain names due to conflicts with existing trademarks for off-line companies.

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