Choosing the perfect domain name should be easy. But years of pillaging by domain prospectors, desperate to make some money from the reputation of those more talented than themselves, has made domain choice something of a hit and miss affair.

Chances are, if you haven’t already registered your own name as a domain, someone will have already taken it. I’m one of the lucky ones. I registered ashleymorgan.com over ten years ago.

The lack of good domain names was thrown into sharp focus earlier in the week when my wife and I decided to search for a domain name that would cover our whole family and work as an umbrella brand. The only stipulation was that the family name, Morgan, was prominent in the title.

We wrote a list of around twenty names that we liked, including morganandmorgan.com, morganmorgan.com, morganindustries.com, morganinc.com, and many others.

All were taken. Most were being sat on by domain prospectors and the ones that were being used were pointing to some of the ugliest websites you can ever imagine.

We then started thinking a little more laterally and came up with uptheoctave.com, morgansquared.com, and our personal favorite, morgancubed.com. All were available so we jumped on all three and registered them so they were safe while we decided which one to use.

At this point it might sound like I am doing exactly what the domain prospectors are doing. But there is a big dfference. I don’t intend to con people into forking out ridiculous amounts of money for those domains in the future. They will all, at some stage, play a part in the branding exercise that I am currently undertaking.

This raises the question, how do you choose the perfect domain name for your blog when practically everything appears to be taken?

The answer is through creative and lateral thinking.

If you have a personal blog then your own name would be the obvious choice. But, if that’s gone, and it’s likley that it has, then work your niche into the name as well. For instance, if your name is John Doe, you want to blog about music and johndoe.com is taken, which I presume it is, then johndoemusic.com is an ideal choice which is more likely to be available. From there, if you want something less obvious you could go to johndoemusicnation.com or musicwirejohndoe.com or johndoesoundadvice.com.

Keywords in domains aren’t as important as they used to be since the blog spammers got hold of that technique, registered free-legal-advice-new-york.com, repeated the trick for every major city and topic, and generally screwed the system. Thankfully Google isn’t as stupid as the blog spammers and this sort of junk gets pushed into the supplemental search result pages, never to be seen again.

If you need a name that is to used as an umbrella brand then abstract terms work well. Names such as brandjohndoe.com or thejohndoeexperience.com should do the trick.

The important thing to remember is that the really perfect domain name for your blog has not already been registered by someone else. The perfect domain name for your blog is something that you will arrive at after a little time spent thinking laterally and creatively to come up with something unique to you that no one will have thought of before.

Only you will know when inspiration strikes and the perfect domain name appears, metaphorically of course, in flashing lights above your head. And once that name is in your mind, that perfect and original domain name, your chances of finding it available for registration are infinitely greater.