The name you choose for your blog is one of the most important decisions you’ll make in your online career. That title is going to represent you, your work, your brand, quite literally everything you do online. This same level of importance extends to your domain as well. These two pieces come together for form the foundation of your success.
No pressure then, right? Today I’m going to help you choose your blog’s name and domain by taking you through the mental processes and decisions you’ll need to make along the way. By the time we’re done here, you’ll be ready to fill out your WordPress checklist and launch your blog.
What’s in a Name? How to Choose Your Blog’s Title and Domain?
Finding your blog’s title is a journey. Before you can choose a name, you have to understand what it’s going to do. Let’s take a look at the steps you should take leading up to choosing your blog’s name:
Step One: Purpose
Why are you starting a blog?
Are you here because you want to tell a story, start a business, or something in between? You should start by understanding your blog’s purpose. Ultimately, every blog seeks to solve a problem for their readers.
Whether that’s teaching them something new, or explaining how to do something, providing value is the name of the game. If you want your blog to be successful, you need to go into it with a plan that helps your readers solve a problem they have and thus find value in your blog’s content.
As you’re learning how to make a blog, think about how you’re going to change the game by providing internet users with content that changes their lives in small or significant ways.
Step Two: Seeking Your Passion
The ultimate starting point for this lies within finding something you’re passionate about.
Stacy Roberts over at ProBlogger put it perfectly when she said
“Something that seems present and that shines through in the blogs that I read and love is passion.”
You have to truly care about your topic, or it won’t come through in your writing. Your posts will sound flat and dull if your heart’s not in it. Having this passion also gives you the drive to push past the tough times and really find the success you want and deserve.
Try asking yourself these questions:
- What are my biggest hobbies?
- How do I use my free time?
- What’s the one thing I always talk about at family gatherings and parties?
- When I’m looking for something online, what am I searching for?
- What’s my dream job?
Answer these questions honestly and you’ll soon find that you have at least a few topics that really resonate with you. You can further narrow down your ideas by coming up with post titles you would do within that subject. If you have trouble thinking of things to write about, you can take it off the list.
Step Three: Find Your Niche
Your blog’s topic is known as a niche. It’s a specific angle that you bring to the table, and finding it requires some internal reflection a bit of research. Now that you have a topic you know will keep you exciting and passionate for the long-term future, it’s time to narrow things down to your niche.
Let’s say your chosen topic is Health. You want to help people live healthier lives, which is an awesome topic, but plenty of blogs and websites are already doing it. Your niche should exist in a space where the competition is less fierce, and the specific approach you want hasn’t be done a hundred times.
This “hole in your market” is a place for your blog to exist and thrive. In the case of our example, you could focus on a specific type of diet like raw food. Having this laser-focus will allow you to attract a very specific audience and carve a place for yourself among the other health blogs out there.
To help you find this niche, follow these steps:
- Look at other blogs with a similar topic and take note of their names.
- Head to social media and search for your topic to see how many followers other bloggers have in that niche.
- Look at the tone and topics to see if they match your own.
Step Four: Choose Your Blog’s Name
Having found your blog’s purpose, topic, and niche, you now have a strong understanding of your blog and therefore a basis for naming it. From here, your next steps should be centered around creating a title that reflects all of your blog’s characteristics, while still being a catchy and memorable name.
Here are some tips for naming your blog:
- Consider Your Blog’s Concept – Remember that your title should reflect everything you completed up until this point to conceive and plan your blog.
- Grab a Thesaurus – While your blog’s name should be simple, you also want it to be catchy and creative. This is where a thesaurus could come in handy, offering you fancy words for simple concepts.
- Remember Your Tone – Your title should reflect the overall tone of your blog. Whether that’s serious, casual, or informal is completely up to you.
- Look at Other Blogs – Always look to other blogs for inspiration and to see what titles they have used. This will help you understand what type of title and length works best with your chosen audience.
- Easy to Remember – Finally, remember that your blog’s title should be easy to remember. It shouldn’t be difficult to type into a URL address bar, and it should easily roll off the tongue.
Step Five: Choose Your Domain
Many of the same steps that go into choosing your title also go into choosing a domain. The biggest difference between the two is this:
A domain can only be used once.
Since every domain has to be unique, your title becoming your domain may or may not be a possibility. That’s why you need to plan accordingly. You can start by checking to see if your title will work as a domain using a domain search tool.
If, for some reason, your domain name is taken then you can start thinking about other options:
- An abbreviation of your blog’s title
- Your name
- A different extension (.net, .co, .club, etc.)
- Using relevant keywords
Just remember that your domain should follow the same rules as your title in the sense that it is simple and easy to remember.
Final Thoughts
Choosing your blog’s title and domain name is no easy task. You should take into consideration the purpose, tone, and feel of your blog before choosing. How did you narrow down the choices for your blog’s title and domain? Let us know in the comments!
[Main Image: iStockphoto, MmeEmil]
Ronaldo Gomez is a seasoned freelance writer who specializes in all things of digital marketing.
Comments are closed.