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When you start a new blog, one of the most important decisions you’ll make is your domain name. It’s complicated to change it once you pick it, so you want to start off with a good one. But don’t worry; we’ll help walk you through some helpful hints for helping you pick the perfect domain name for your blog
- Make your domain closely relate to your blog name: When you pick your domain name you want it to be, if possible, exactly the name of your blog (like, we are Website Tips and Tutorials and that is literally our domain name, websitetipsandtutorials.com). Why that’s great is sometimes people type in a domain name based on guessing what it is (like Amazon.com or Target.com) and you want people to be able to do that. Plus, if someone is looking for your blog through a google search and notice the domain name is the same they’ll be more sure they’ve found the right blog. Now, sometimes, this is not possible. Sometimes your blog name is common enough that there are already other businesses out there that have your name so you won’t be able to get your domain name (if you are wondering if your domain name is available, you can check to see if a domain is available here). Though in this case, if you haven’t started your blog yet or registered a business name yet, I would urge you to consider either slightly change your name or add a word onto your name to make you more unique. An example of this might be if you are a mom blogger, you might want to be more specific than the name of just “Mom Blog” and maybe add the city you live in, your name or nickname, some feature of you (like blonde or tall or asthmatic or OCD or whatever you feel like really describes you!) or something like that. Not only will this help you with getting a domain name that is similar to your business name, but this may be a sign your business name is too common and it may be harder for people to remember your business or find your business online. But let’s say you already have a business name registered or you have an online presence with a specific name (like you have an active Instagram or Twitter and you want a blog to go along with it). You could consider adding another word to it that makes sense, such as “blog” at the end or the name of your city or something like that. But…
- Don’t get too creative: If you can’t get the domain name you want and you have to make your domain name different from your blog (or if you’re still in the process of naming your blog), make sure you don’t get too creative. Your blog & domain name should roughly let people know what the blog is about. For example, let’s say you want to have a beauty blog. Even if you want to make your name uniquely you, it should still ideally say something about beauty; for example, if you name it “awhisperinacrowdedroom.com” that may sound cool and dramatic but people who come across your domain would have absolutely no idea what it was about – and neither would search engines, which could hurt your search engine ranking and make it harder for new readers to find your blog.
- Use Good Keywords: So as I just mentioned, it is important for your domain name to be good so that you show up higher in search engines, and for that reason, it is great if you use good keywords for your domain name. Basically, what this means is that there are certain words and phrases that people Google when searching for material like your blog, and if you have keywords that match up with their searches, your material will show up higher in Google and other search engines and therefore you’ll have more people visit your blog. A good place to find good keywords for your blog is KeySearch Starter.
- Know Your Audience: When choosing a name for your domain and/or blog, make sure your domain makes sense with your audience. What I mean by that is, let’s say your blog is supposed to target people of a specific geographic region or age. Make sure if you use any kind of slang terms in the name that it makes sense with that target audience (like if you are British and you want American readers, make sure any slang term you used is also used in America). Same principal here with spelling, too.
- Think Long Term: When you are picking your domain name, this is probably going to be your blog domain name long term, so you want to think long term. What I mean by that is, what you blog about today may not be what you want to blog about later. For example, you may start off in a small niche (like, for example, TexMex recipes) but if your long term goal is to have all kinds of recipes, you might want a domain name to reflect that. Another problem would be if your material changes altogether; I’ll give you this example – TexMex recipes would still make sense in a larger recipe blog. Now, you might also want to be thinking about long term if your topics will change. Let’s say you are a mom of twin toddlers, so you start a blog that has a domain like momoftwintoddlers.com. You may want to write about tips for moms of twin toddlers right now since you have twin toddlers, and you might want to continue that niche since there will always be moms of twin toddlers and your advice will still be great. But if your vision for your blog was to more write about your experiences as you have them, well then, your twins won’t be toddlers forever. You might later have great advice for moms of twins in grade school, but people might not find your blog because they’ll think your blog is just about toddlers. So in this case, you might want to make your blog domain and name more about being a Mom of Twins than specifically being a toddler so that your blog can grow along with your children.
- Use a .com: If you’ve ever gone to purchase a domain name, then you may have noticed you can save money by buying something that is not com (such as .site, .best, .online, .top, etc.) – but I would get .com because it sounds more professional, and the difference between the cost of the two really aren’t that great, like if you buy your domain through Dynadot, you can see the difference isn’t too huge. And some website hosts, like Bluehost and GreenGeeks, give you a free domain for a year when you set up your blog, and FastComet gives you a free domain for life, so you really should go ahead and get a .com domain.
And if you end up going with A2 as a host and buying your domain separately, then here is a video of how to point your domain to your web host (something you wouldn’t have to do if you went with a web host like Bluehost, Fastcomet or):
