Choosing the right domain name for your company is extremely important, regardless of how you drive traffic to your website (ex. Adwords, SEO, article marketing, etc.).

Many people settle with just one domain name, without realizing that your domain is one of the few things that your competitors can't copy from you. This is why I always recommend to buy multiple domain names, so that they are no longer available on the market. Buying a domain used to be expensive, but nowadays you can get a .com domain for a few bucks a year.

Before you buy a domain, consider how you customers will search for you on the internet. Unless they already know you, they won't search for your company name. They are going to look for the solution to a problem they have. If they are afraid of speaking in public, they could search for "speaking in public", "learn how to speak in public", etc. Why not buying a domain such as speakinginpublic.com or learntospeakinpublic.com?

Having your main keywords (those that people use when searching for your products or services) in your domain is important if you use Adwords but also if you rely on free traffic from the natural search results. And here is why...

Buying and using a keyword-rich domain name in Adwords is a great strategy for three main reasons. First of all, the domain name is the only part of your ad that your competitors can't copy. Secondly, if the user searched for any of the keywords contained in your domain name, those are going to be displayed in bold: this makes your ad stand out from the crowd.

And last but not least, having a keyword-rich domain usually increases your Click-Through Rate: you are going to get more traffic to your website and be charged less for each click, because Google rewards you for having achieved a higher CTR.

If you are doing Search Engine Optimization, you must buy a domain that contains your main keyword. This is in fact one of the various factors that can influence your ranking in the natural search results.

Since domains are so cheap, you can even decide to buy one when you are advertising in any kind of media, both online and offline. Why? Because by using a unique domain name that redirects to your main site, you can track exactly how much traffic was generated by that ad. And you can tailor that domain name to the main topic of your advertisement.

If you have an online store and you want to promote LED lamps, you can buy ledlamps.com and use that domain in your ads.

So how do you know if the domain you want is still available? You go to http://www.namecheap.com, type your domain name, make sure ".com" is selected and click on Search.

Do you need to buy your domain from your hosting company? No, you can buy it at namecheap.com and then modify the DNS settings to point it to your hosting company servers. Does this sound too technical for you? Don't worry, I recorded a step-by-step video tutorial that teaches you how to do just that. Click on the link you see at the end of this article.

What if the domain you want is not available? In that case, the first thing I would do is to look for the singular/plural alternative. If bluewidgets.com is taken, maybe bluewidget.com is still available.
Another strategy is to separate the words in your domain with a dash: blue-widgets.com.

Still no luck? Try using extra words in front of or at the end of your main keywords: cheap-blue-widgets.com, blue-widgets-direct.com.

Even though I recommend you to always get the .com extension, if all the strategies above produce no results, you can still go for a .net or .biz domain.

Now that you know how easy it is to buy a new domain but also how important it is to have the right domain for your market, you have no excuse for not starting your domains portfolio today!