If your preferred choice is not available, try the next combination. In the event all your chosen phrases are unavailable, you may want to consider adding hyphens between your words.

• Make a List - Start brainstorming for words and phrases relevant to your core business and content, listing as many as you can.
• Combine words - Since it is unlikely your single name words will be available, combine your chosen words to make combinations that are: short,memorable and not easily confused especially not hard to misspell.

Note: This site's domain name is a good example of one which is prone to mis-spelling by people typing 'konstruct' instead of konstruc!!

When combining words, try and avoid double letters for example :-

• domainsshop.com.

People are likely to forget one of the s's.

Try to create a domain name which contains a popular keyword applicable for your industry. This will help your customers remember your domain name better.

Avoid domain names which contain the digit “0”, unless it is going to be part of a recognisable word (like 1000 or 2000). This is to avoid confusion between the digit “0” and the letter “O”.

Don't use txt speak for example domains that contain ‘2’ for “to,” ‘4’ for ‘for,’ ‘u’ for ‘you.’

While shorter domain names are easier to remember and type, and far less susceptible to mistakes, for example domainsdirect.com is a better choice than thebestplacetogetyourdomainnamedirect.com, don't be tempted to use abbreviations ie tbptgydnd.com even though a sequence of unrelated letters is more likely to be available.

The domain name

can be of any length up to 67 characters and includes the 26 letters of the English alphabet, numbers 0-9, and hyphens (-). The domain name cannot begin or end with a hyphen but, can contain one or more hyphens.

All domain names

have a suffix or extension, known as a TLD (Top Level Domain), which is usually based on the type of organisation with which it is associated.

The most common domain suffixes are:-

• .com, .co.uk – commercial business domains
• .net – commercial network
• .org, .org.uk – nonprofit organizations
• .edu – educational institution

Additional domain name extensions include : .biz, .info, .name.

There are a few things to consider before choosing a hyphenated domain name.

Disadvantages:

It's easy to forget the hyphens when typing a name. Many users are used to typing things like totallabels.co.uk but not total-labels.co.uk. Since the reason you have opted for hyphens is that the domain name wasn't available, your visitors who leave out the hyphens may go to a competitor's site.

When relaying your domain name verbally, hyphens are difficult to explain. People may interpret a hyphen as a 'dash' or an 'underscore'.

Advantages:

If your domain name is comprised of your main keywords, arguably the search engines can distinguish your keywords better and thus return your site more prominently in search results. However this a dubious advantage. If your site is of a sufficient size, frequently updated and full of keyword rich content then a hyphenated domain name may not be worth considering based on the disadvantages listed above.