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Tips For Choosing The Best Domain Name For Your Blog

Tips For Choosing The Best Domain Name For Your Blog

When you are starting a new blog, one of the very first things that you will have to do is select a new domain name.

This may seem like a very small and largely inconsequential decision that you have to make, but in reality, it’s one of the most important decisions that you can make as you begin your new blog.

This is because a truly great domain name needs to accomplish several things at once:

  • It needs to be catchy and memorable
  • It needs to accurately convey what your blog is about
  • It can’t be taken already
  • It needs to be short and to the point

You get the idea. Suddenly, you’re realizing that more work needs to go into choosing and creating your domain name than you may have thought if you want it to be successful in reaching out to readers/customers.

And remember, once you do choose your domain name, you’re going to be stuck with it likely for as long as your blog exists.

With that in mind, here are my top tips to for choosing the best domain name for your blog:

Make Sure It’s Available

First and foremost, you obviously have to ensure that your domain name is available, to begin with.

However, you’ll probably find that the amount of available domain name is actually rather limited. For example, in 2017, over 330 million NEW domain names were registered. So the competition is very stiff, to say the least.

There are a number of ways by which you can check if your domain name is available. For example, you can go to your domain hosting provider and check to see which names have been taken already.

Be Original

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It’s possible to nearly ‘copy’ other domain names that are available without actually using the exact same keywords.

For example, let’s say that another website has the domain name of ‘WordPress Security Solutions.com’

But then let’s say that you use the domain name of something incredibly similar, such as ‘WP Security Solutions.com’ or ‘WordPress Security Solution.com’

Even though you aren’t taking the exact same domain name in this hypothetical scenario, you are choosing one that is incredibly similar, and as a result of that it will be much more difficult for people to differentiate it.

In other words, your domain name will simply have a hard time standing out.

Lesson learned? Be original.

Keep It Accurate

The next most important factor to keep in mind when searching for your blog’s domain name is to keep it accurate.

In other words, your domain name needs to accurately describe what your blog is about. People should be able to read your domain name, and immediately have an idea of what kind of content your blog has.

To put this into perspective, if a blog were to have a domain name with the word ‘scribble’ in it, it’s probably going to have something to do with writing, right?

Go ahead and take a look at some of the domain names for your favorite website and blogs right now. You’ll probably notice that most if not all of those websites and blog have a domain name that accurately represents what they do.

Search For Popular Keywords

It’s also not a bad idea to include popular keywords in your domain name.

You see, your domain name shouldn’t just accurately describe what your blog is about. It should also contain at least one keyword that is relevant or a keyword that people are searching for.

At the very least, this will help make your blog visible.

This way, and assuming that the name of your blog is the same or similar to your domain name when people search for relevant topics.

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The Shorter, the Better

How long (or how short) should your domain name be?

Here’s a good rule: try to keep it to twelve characters or less. The shorter your domain name is, the less time it takes for people to type it in and the easier it is to remember as well.

Speaking of which…

Make Sure It’s Easy To Remember

The more ‘catchy’ and easy to remember your domain name is, the more memorable it will be. People will be more likely to remember it in the back of their minds so they can easily come back to your blog should they forget to bookmark it. Plus, a domain name that’s easier to remember should be easier for people to type too.

Make Use of Hyphens

Using hyphens can, sometimes, improve the readability of your domain name. This is especially true if your domain name is longer and ends up going past the twelve character limit like we suggested above.

Go With ‘.Com’

Since ‘.Com’ is by far the most popular domain name extension and the most accepted as well, it’s the one you should try to use for your domain name. The best backup option will be ‘.Org,’ and after that, ‘Net.’

Conclusion

If there’s one thing that you take away from this article, it’s that more thought needs to go into choosing your domain name than you may have initially thought. In fact, when your blog is just getting started, choosing a domain name will be more important than choosing blog topics to begin writing.

If you’re struggling to come up with a suitable domain name for your blog, run through each of the tips provided to you, and you’ll come up with a good one soon enough.

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Author Bio

Sam Bocetta is an independent journalist and former Naval defense analyst, currently specializing in writing about technology, cybersecurity, and cryptography.

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