Before going to the subject of alternate domain names, let us first understand what is meant by a domain name.
It is something that can be called as your identity in the internet space. Just like you have a company name offline by which your business is recognised, you need to have a name that is accessible to everybody intending to do business with you in the web space. So if you have a domain name as www.xxx.com, upon anybody typing this name in the address bar of the browser, your site will get displayed on the screen making it easy for that person to look at the products or services on offer.

From a technical perspective, the domain name picks up computers from the web space and is displayed as one part of the actual URL of the website that has been queried. Each domain name is linked to a group of IP addresses or a series of numbers and that is how specific websites are identified and their location is determined. In the early days of the internet, every computer was identified through the IP address, but since it was not humanly possible to remember so many numbers, a new system of domain naming was initiated and that is how each website having a name is now easy to search on the search engine and people do not have problems remembering names of websites.

Having established a good business and a domain name that is easily accessible, you need to think of scenarios when due to some problem, somebody typing in your domain name cannot access your site. This can cause serious issues to your business since the visitor is likely to lose patience and may not try again resulting in a potential loss of opportunity. It is possible that your competitors may take undue advantage of this technical problem and win over your customers.

However, the good thing about the internet is, unlike in the physical world where if you land up at a wrong place, you have to take the trouble and go where you initially intended all by your self, the internet has a solution.

You need to go for an alternate domain name as a standby so that the traffic meant for you only comes to you and is not directed elsewhere. Through the alternate domain name, you can ensure that your customers are directed to you in the event of any problem in your original domain name and all you have got to do is to have the alternate name on the following basis:

* A name with a slight change in spelling
* Deliberately misspelling your original name
* Look for words that are phonetically similar to your original name like .org or .net
* Go for plural names of your original domain name

Through these alternate domain names, you can safeguard your business interests and ensure that traffic meant for you only comes to you and not to your competition.