10 Tips On Choosing The Perfect Domain Name For Your Blog
Don’t be fooled, picking a bad domain name can hurt your blog. Your domain name is like the brand of a business, and similar to every other product, your blog will be quite hard to rebrand if you decide to change the name later on.
Some people don’t take the process of choosing a domain serious, and I urge you to take it seriously and make the right choice. With that been said, here are 9 useful tips I put together to help you with domain selection.
Keep it simple and relevant
Your domain name should be relevant to your niche, short, catchy and memorable. It should be easy to spell and pronounce. The more letters and words your domain name makes up, the more likely a visitor will mis-spell it. So, try sticking to 1-3 words maximum.
Be Unique
Avoid making your domain name similar to one of your competitions. Think about it, you are a new fish in the sea, a rookie. Your goal is to stand out. Don’t be a copycat. Your competition will be on to you more, watching your every move. This can also make you lose visitors with a higher bounce rate. A visitor might confuse your site with a competitor’s site and land on yours by accident.
No need to stuff your domain name with SEO keywords
You might feel like you are obligated to stuff your domain name with keywords that might score you a great spot on the search engines within your niche. However, you don’t have to do that. Your great content will land you that spot.
Look at twitter for instance, that name sounds like a baby made it up. Yet, it’s so catchy and easy to remember. People might not know what your blog is about off the bat by your domain name, but the name will stick to them once they visit your blog and fall in love with it.
Going this route always works best when you use only one word like Facebook, apple, etc., it’s also easier to remember. So, don’t be afraid to get extra creative.
Is your domain name available on social media?
Double check to make sure your domain name is available on Social Media. What’s worse then preparing everything on the domain side, and then when you get to the part where you create social media profiles, the name is already taken, resulting in a compromised name?
An easy tool to check if your name is taken or not is by visiting Known. It’ll search over 550 social networks (both popular and emerging) and if it’s available, it links straight to the registration page for you to secure it.
Think and plan long term:
You will be stuck with your domain for as long as your site exist. It’s important to think long term and make sure the name will still be relevant and fresh years from now.
Avoid using years or a time period. Time is always ticking but your brand should remain timeless as far as its name. Avoid using any curse or inappropriate words that might prevent you from expanding your business in the long run; including collaborations, sponsorships, etc. Keep it professional.
Also, make your domain name flexible enough for your niche. For instance, let’s say you own a blog called greenteasmoothies.com for two years. Now, you want to expand the topic and write about other green tea recipes not related to smoothies… that might contradict your domain name. So always think and plan ahead.
Should You Use Hyphens Or Not ?
Hyphens is your friend and enemy. Only use them when you think it’s really necessary. In google’s eyes… hyphens is a space between words. This may help you secure a coveted keyword rich domain name, however it can cause a verbal communication problem. What sounds better verbally?
‘’ Hey go check out my website at buyinghousestips.com’’ or ‘’ Hey go check out my website at buying hyphen houses hyphen tips.com’’?
Please note, apart from causing verbal communication problems, just like domain names without hyphens, domain names with hyphens still have a great success potential.
Use The TLD Dot Com First
Register your domain under the top-level domain (TLD) dot com. People automatically assumes your website ends with dot com anyways. If you use a different version, you will likely lose traffic to whoever has the dot com version. You can also park the other TLD versions; .net . org .co.uk, etc., to avoid other people from registering it. (Parking means buying it but not using it: This prevents anyone else from using that domain.)
Consider Alternative Domain Names
If you feel like your domain name will get misspelled, you should consider alternate domain names to purchase. For instance, fiverr.com gets misspelled a lot due to the extra ‘’r’’. When most people hear fiverr.com, they automatically assume ‘‘fiver’’. Due to this, the company now owns both domain names. Whether you type in fiverr.com or fiver.com, it instantly directs your to the original website; fiverr.com. You can also do the same for your blog to avoid losing potential traffic.
Be Very Conscious With Trademarks In Your Domain Name
Avoid a headache and lawsuit by picking a domain name that don’t violate someone else’s trademark, or conflicts with any one of the millions of commercial names that already exist.
You don’t want to put all that effort and sweat into creating and marketing your blog just to get sued for thousands of dollars.
So…just to give you a heads up, names that identify the source of products or services in the marketplace are trademarks. One trademark legally conflicts with another when the use of both trademarks is likely to confuse customers about the products or services, or their source.
In case of a legal conflict with a later user, the first commercial user of a trademark owns it. If a legal conflict is found to exist, the later user will probably have to stop using the mark and may even have to pay the trademark owner damages.
Don’t Rush, Just Sleep On It:
When you find a domain name that you feel is perfect for your site, don’t register it right away, instead… sleep on it. Also, get feedbacks from a couple of honest people. Remember, it’s not only what you like, but also what your visitors will like. So, if outside sources agree with your domain name… most likely future visitors will too.