As a worker in the domain industry, I was surprised by the
difference between this year and last in the Super Bowl. No, I
didn't necessarily care about the teams involved, but I am an
avid watcher of the commercials every year, and took note of the
fact that it seemed about half of the ads one year ago were for
.com companies. This year, there were very few by comparison.


Traffic. The Internet game is all about traffic. It's a simple
equation- visitors = $$. Whether they are buying your products
or driving up your ad revenues, visitors to your website are the
key to your success. There are, of course, many ways to increase
traffic to your site. It would appear, though, that spending
more than a million bucks on a 30-second commercial is not a
cost-effective method, as many of those companies in the 2000
Super Bowl discovered.

One method that is cost-effective is not
effectively utilized by many webmasters. Most webmasters I know
have just one domain name for their site. As a simple rule,
though, the more ways there are to find you, the more you will
be found. Your company name, obviously, is a great place to
start. I, like many other contemporary websurfers, am a
"web-guesser". If I'm looking for The Widget Company, Inc., I'll
type in "widgetcompany.com" and get their website more often
than not. If the webmaster for The Widget Company is smart,
though, he'll also have "thewidgetcompany.com",
"widgetcompanyinc.com" and "thewidgetcompanyinc.com" pointing to
the same site. Real-life example- Coca-Cola. Their official
website is coke.com.

They also own, however, cocacola.com,
coca-cola.com, coca-colacompany.com and thecoca-colacompany.com,
along with a whole host of others. One offshoot of the company
name is variants. Have you ever lamented the state of education
in America today? What would happen if someone typed in
"wiGDetcompany.com"? Misspellings of your domain count just the
same as the correct one. Poor spellers, after all, need your
services as much as the good ones do. If you're in doubt, find
some people that don't already know your company's name. Tell
them the name, and then have them write it out on paper. You
might be surprised at the creative variations of your name
they'll come up with.

Reserve those "mistake" names- they'll
count as hits, too. Real-life example- Hewlett-Packard. Not the
easiest name to spell, right? Their official website at hp.com
can also be reached by hewlettpackard.com, hewlittpackard.com,
hewlitpackard.com and other assorted misspellings. OK, you make
widgets. You should have "widgets.com". If you make red widgets,
you should also own "redwidgets.com". If you make small widgets,
you should get "smallwidgets.com" and so on. You spend your time
marketing these product names, you should expect that someone
would remember it and go looking for it online. Real-life
example- Procter & Gamble. P&G owns around 200 domains,
including pampers.com, pringles.com, tide.com, clearasil.com,
folgers.com and many, many more.

Having these domains gives you a competitive advantage. You can
get more traffic just from these simple tricks. I've seen
webmasters spend a lot of money on advertising, hiring
search-engine submission specialists and the like. Now that the
cost of domains has dropped more than 50% in the past year (less
than $15.00 at the company I consult for), it's actually one of
the more affordable things you can do to get the eyeballs to
your site.