How to choose a domain name for your blog

Choosing a perfect domain name for your business website or personal blog can be a daunting task as it requires a lot of thinking, brainstorming, and considerations. When in reality, it shouldn’t be so complex.

In this post, I will be sharing a few tips following which you can choose the perfect domain name for your blog.

Your domain name acts as your online identity on the internet and it represents who you are, what you do, and what you want to resonate with your readers and potential website visitors. Choosing the right domain name for your business might sound stressful but you needn’t break your head over it when there are so many tools online nowadays to generate a list of available domain names based on the keywords you have entered. Read on to find out how you can choose the perfect domain name for your business website or a personal blog.

Represent your brand/identity

Before going for a domain name, make sure it adequately represents your brand or identity. This is the most important step for business owners and bloggers alike as you can’t keep changing your domain name every now and then. Don’t make it too complicated or difficult to spell out. By just hearing your domain name, people should be able to associate it with you or your business.

Keep it short & crisp

Don’t go for long domain names even if your business name is long. Shorter domain names are easier to remember, type in the browser’s address bar, and share them with others during a conversation. Moreover, shorter domain names won’t get shortened further on certain social media platforms and search engine result pages.

Make it pronounceable

Make sure your domain name is easier to pronounce so that it doesn’t create any confusion in spelling when the user tries to access your website straight from their browser’s address bar without looking up for it on Google. People tend to remember things for longer when it is pronounceable; it gets stored in their lower subconscious memory. What if you are an influencer and a big brand or business wants to get in touch with you badly regarding a potential opportunity for you to promote their new product but they couldn’t find your website because it wasn’t easier to pronounce and remember? You just lost a golden opportunity!

Stick with Dotcom

It is an unwritten rule from the book of the internet that a ‘.com’ domain is always preferred over other top-level domain name extensions such as .net, .org, etc (TLDs), and especially over country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) such as .in, .ca, .fr, etc. I don’t know if Google is biased towards .com or what, but I can assure you that it is the most widely recognized and accessible TLD. Most people by default enter their favorite brand or business’s name in their browser’s address bar and add a ‘.com’ to it to visit their website.

Don’t infringe on others trademark

If you infringe on a registered trademark, there are heavy chances for affected parties to take legal action against you and sue or your business. Don’t append registered trademarks to your domain name (like nikeshoes4all.com, cooladidasshoes.com, godaddydomains.com, yourfacebook.com, cheapsamsungphones.com, etc) while registering your domain name. Registering domain names that are very similar to other established businesses and influencers (like oneplusphones.xyz, apple.audio, etc) and creating confusion among their followers with your website will do you more bad than good for your business. DO NOT EVER DO IT!

Keep it relevant and brandable

A good domain name should be brandable and convey what your business is about without making people think twice about what your products and services may be about. If your business is all about music streaming, it shouldn’t be named like a web hosting company. Or else people will mistake it for a music hosting company instead.

Use proper keywords

Using keywords in your domain name can boost your SEO score and make your website more relevant than your competitors. For example, the most popular WordPress resource site ‘WPBeginner‘ uses the keyword ‘WP’ in their domain name. WP stands for WordPress – the most popular blogging software. But don’t spam your domain name with multiple keywords; one broad keyword is enough. For example, if you own a recipe site – don’t name it like ‘eggnoodlesrecipe.com’ or ‘chicken65foryou.com’. Instead, go for a broad domain name like ‘noodlesrecipebook.com’ or ‘ultimatehickenrecipes.com’.

Avoid numbers and symbols

Try to avoid using numbers and symbols in your domain name. This is mainly because people can forget the numbers and placement of symbols in your domain name. Also, they can get confused if the ‘1’ in your domain represents the number ‘1’, capital ‘i’, small ‘L’, or the text ‘one’ when they see it or hear it over an audio advertisement (unless your brand is already as famous as the One Plus).

Conclusion

With that in mind, I would like to hear your thoughts on domain name choices and what you think about them. By the way, it’s time for you to register your first domain name and create your new website in just 5 minutes (thank me later 😉 ). If you liked this post, I’m sure you would also appreciate my post on 7 reasons why you should use WordPress and how to choose the best web hosting company for WordPress.