Domain name question

[bridget]

I have a question that doesn't have anything to do with internet marketing but I thought someone might have a solution for. We have a domain name www.irestore.net for our brick and mortar store and we also do online repairs. When we bought the domain name the .com was owned by a furniture repair company and since we are a apple electronics repair company, we weren't worried about them. We missed the sale of the .com and it was purchased by a company who uses it as a forward to a site that is similar to what we are, but when you try to click on any of the links it is obvious it is a non-working site. This site has killed our online business. Would love some advice on how to deal with this, without spending a fortune. thanks so much
Bridget

[billdotd]

What are your target keyword phrases?

[bridget]

Our business is a very tough one to rank in with keywords, but since we are a brick and mortar business in Nashville we concentrate on ranking for that, our main phrases are macintosh computer repair nashville, iphone repair nashville and lcd screen repair nashville, we rank on the 1st page and that other domain name is not for those, but if someone just typed in our business name and used the .com instead of the .net they would get there site and since it looks like the same business but nothing works, i am worried people are assuming it is ours and not trying the .net

[MikeF421]

If you don't want to do it yourself, you need to hire a good SEO person.

What I would do is get my site outranking theirs, and probably try to get 2-3 other sites outranking theirs as well. Maybe a Facebook page, Youtube video, lead capture page, whatever.

You knock them down to the middle of the page one or lower on Google, and you'll get all the traffic.

I can recommend a few people if you need someone.

[wade_watson]

A fact of life on the Internet is that when a domain name isn't available that's the end of that story (unless you want to try and buy the domain from the owner, which will probably cost you plenty). Whether it's being used or not is irrelevant. But they have not "killed" your online business. I'm afraid full responsibility for that goes to you. You should not be dependent upon a domain name for traffic.

I don't think you need to change your main URL, but you could certainly register a few others and redirect them to your site. Many .net sites have far exceeded the .com versions in traffic before, too. I even have a free subsite that far outranks the .com version of the name. As the others have said, you need to do some SEO work.

Any domain name idea has many possible variations:
lynnterry.com
lynn-terry.com
lynnterryblog.com
lynnterrymarketing.com
lynnterryweb.com
lynnterryideas.com
readlynnterry.com
knowlynnterry.com
lynnterrytalks.com

All it takes is a little imagination.