Whatever domain name you choose for your website, try to ensure it captures these criteria:

• Encapsulates the theme of the website
• Easy to remember
• Easy to spell
• A brandable name e.g. not simply descriptive of the service
• .com & .co.uk both available to prevent traffic going to someone else

Sound difficult? It certainly can be. Use these tips to help you along:

Use a thesaurus for inspiration

Type in the core theme of your website in to a thesaurus and see if you can find any related keywords that you like. For example in you have an online shop you could type in "store" and you will be presented with words such as; backlog, cache, inventory, nest egg, reserve, reservoir, stock, stockpile, treasure, store, boutique, emporium, outlet.

Go web 2.0

Web 2.0 style domain names are all the rage, and they are proven to be an effective method of branding and easy to remember. Good examples include flickr, wuffo, bliin and zoogmo. To create your web 2.0 simply remove a vowel (e.g. trackr), add a vowel or two (e.g. miiix), add two unrelated short words together (e.g. snapfrog) or use utter jibberish (e.g. boblr).

Use unrelated words

Lets say you want to create a funky music review site and you find every obvious variation on music, gigs and reviews taken, simply add in a word that is not connected to music but still makes sense in the context of the site's target audience. for example, you could try "gigblaster", "musicpython", "soundcastle", "ticketstubwire" and so on.

Add 'my', 'your' or 'the' at the start

The risk with this approach is people forgetting to type in the 'my', 'your' or 'the' in to their browser and you losing the traffic to another site. However adding words such as 'my', 'your' or 'the' to the start can let you register a domain with keywords you feel you really must have. E.g. If "totalbbq" is taken you could register "thetotalbbq".

Still can't find what you're looking for? Help is at hand (que trumpets and gospel chants) with the 123-reg domain name suggestion tool.

Search for your domain name as normal and if you find the extension you want has been taken, simply click on the link "Can't find the domain you're looking for? Try our domain suggestions tool" and thanks to some fancy semantic software you will be given a list of related alternatives to choose from.