Before you can begin to actually build your site you need to know what to call it.  Choosing a domain name is an important exercise because your blog is stuck with it forever, because changing it is a pretty big hassle.

There are quite a few factors that you can take into consideration when choosing your domain name, and the exercise of doing so shouldn’t be taken lightly.  Following this we’ll be talking about the many factors that you need to think about when creating a domain name.

When you do decide on a domain name – I would suggest using Namecheap to register all of your domains!  They offer free private registration and SSL for all domains for their first year.

Brand vs. Keyword Domains

Obviously you have to think about this when you are creating a domain.  Before we think about anything else we need to decide what the long term goal of our blog is.

Have you chosen a niche that you are passionate about?  If you have – then you will want to think about choosing a brandable domain.  When you are blogging about a niche that you are passionate about and plan to blog about for a long time – loyal readers will be the bulk of your readership.

You’ll get traffic from social media marketing, and of course from the search engines.  Even though your domain may not have any keywords in it you will still be able to get search engine traffic by properly optimizing each post.  You’ll have to work a bit harder to rank your site in the search engines without any keywords in your domain.

Going for a brandable domain has more advantages then problems if you plan to create a long term authority site.   A brandbale domain needs to be as short and memorable as possible.  The domain becomes the identity of the blog itself.

The other type of domain that you can choose is one that is based on a keyword that you would like to target.  If you plan to create several smaller blogs then this might be the route you would want to go.  With a keyword based domain you give yourself a much easier chance of ranking high in the search engines.

If you find a keyword that you want to target and you are able to get the exact match dot com of that keyword then that is the easiest way to begin ranking for a domain.

You don’t always have to choose one route or the other.  You could choose a brandable domain that also contains a keyword or two in it.

Your job for today is to come up with ideas for your blog using both brand and keyword domains.  In our next post I’ll go over more factors involved in choosing your final domain name.  Get your creative juices flowing and come up with as many names as you can and write them down. Don’t share your ideas with anyone or they may buy the domain before you do!