When choosing a domain name, most will look to use the name for there business. There's nothing wrong with that but does your business name contain a keyword that search engines are going to consider a keyword for your website. Some Webmasters use a trick by adding a keyword to there domain name, that they think people will search for to find websites similar to there own. There's also a chance that search engines may rank the website higher due to the keyword attached to the domain name.

When I chose a domain name, I originally wanted it to match my domain name to my business name. Since this website is based around web design, I included the “design” part in my business name as I liked the sound of “Notretsam Design” but I didn't like the sound of “Notretsam Web Design” for a business name but as I'm sure you're aware, I registered this as my domain name.

You will already know what the main content of your website is and will also have decided on your own business name. Try and include a keyword that is based around the main content of your website. I would suggest going to Google and search for the main content you attend to provide and see what type of keywords portray the highest results. Then select a keyword with the fewer results, as this obviously means you have less website's to compete with. Although make sure there is results for the keyword you choose, as if there is none results or very few pages, then that would suggest that no one will search for that keyword. Also keep in mind that people will generally search by using more than one word. So try and identify a common word from the results of your research.

There is another option you can use if you find the domain name containing a keyword is already taken or you wish to actually register your business name for your domain.

Most web hosting companies will provide you with a certain number of sub-domains. This means you can add another word to your domain name, for example if I had registered “notretsam.com” instead of what I did. I could then use a sub-domain and have something like “webdesign.notretsam.com”.

So the question you have to ask yourself is do I want to add a keyword to my domain name? or lose out on potential extra traffic.