You probably have experienced times when you tried everything you can think of for a great domain, but they were always taken. You should always move quickly with domain names just because they are constantly being registered all the time. Then you have to wade through all the mess just to pay for it. You know how it is with the fine print and just tons of info they want you to read. There is much more to this domain name hunting process than meets the eye.

If you want to brand yourself, then you would use your name if available; but otherwise think in terms of your unique selling proposition. Just approach this from the standpoint of making things easy on your target audience. So when you're selecting the words in your domain name, make sure they aren't words that are usually misspelled. A URL can be a strange thing because you have words, and then you have words that are strung together with no spaces. Open up the thesaurus and find a substitute for the word you want to go for, so that you don't lose meaning at the same time and get a good domain name. Nothing could be more worse than having a domain name that looks and sounds similar to a name of some popular website. Rather than riding on the popularity of this website, you'll end up sending it a large share of your own traffic - bad, right? Stay far away from hyphens or anything else that could make people think of another site. The trend of registering domain names with a missing 'e' or a missing 'i' is gone - if you don't want your traffic going to the wrong domain name, then please be as unique as possible.

Just a word of warning about your domain expiring, do not let that happen if you truly place a lot of value on it. If you register your domain for two years, you will get added SEO value out of that. If you heavily develop your domain name and site, then you never want to take any chances with losing it. But do not ignore the expiration warnings from your domain registrar - Namecheap, perhaps?

A memorable domain name that rings with your audience will help you in the long run. In other words, your domain name should have no problem becoming the identity of your business and represent it correctly. A bad domain name can send out a wrong signal to your target audience, and can also affect your overall search engine ranking. You will have a lot of work just to brand your domain, so there is every reason for you to help the process along.