There are other factors involved besides choosing a domain based on a brand or keyword. You have to think long term when you are creating your domain name. You have to consider the goals and objectives of the site that you are building past just the brand or keyword decision.
Overall Naming Strategy
What is the topic of the blog? Obviously you’ll want to consider your blogs topic when you are naming it. Most blog names reflect the topic that they are speaking about, as with all domains. There are some major exceptions if you are going for branding. Google and Yahoo are two big domains that provide no insight as to what they are based on the domain alone. So if you have an interesting and brandable domain that you think will work then just go for it!
- What would you like to achieve with your blog? Are you blogging because you love to blog? Or are you blogging because you want to earn a living online? What are your plans to monetize your blog? Is this blog to drive traffic to your existing business or will you be an affiliate of others?
- What style will this blog be? Are you writing alone, or with others? What type of blog posts will make up the majority of your posts?
- What tone of voice will it be written in? Will this blog be your personal thoughts on a subject? Or will it be news based or even humourus?
- Who will read your blog? Your audience is very important. You’ll want to choose a domain that resonates with them as well as possible.
Your Blogs Traffic Source
In the last post we talked about this a little bit. You have to ask yourself how you will be getting your traffic. Where will the bulk of your traffic come from? We already went over this yesterday but I want to reinforce it.
If you are planning to hit the pavement and really work the social media angle and promote your site then a domain that is memorable is your best bet. If you want to simply optimize your posts and let the search engines bring in the traffic then you should look for a keyword.
Personally if I am going to be writing on a subject that I plan to create a blog around I would rather have it be a branded name. If I am simply creating a small affiliate based site it’s not really a blog in the first place. While I do use the wordpress platform for my smaller keyword based sites – I create 10 or 20 posts but I’m not blogging daily like I would with a large authority blog.
Consider the future of your blog
What are your plans down the road for this blog? Are you going to start small in a micro niche and then try to tackle the large niche? If that’s the case you’ll want to get a domain that works for the larger niche.
You don’t want to outgrow your blogs name to the point that it no longer makes sense. So you should plan for the future as best as you can. Make sure that you pick a name that is evergreen, one that will stand the test of time and has no relevance on a certain period in time to make sense.
Keep it Short and Simple
People have a tough time remembering what they had for breakfast – you can’t expect them to remember your domain name if you register one that is 100 words long. You also want to make sure that your domain makes sense, and it flows when the user is trying to say it or type it in.
Hyphens can cause a problem in most domains because people forget to type them in all the time. While one or maybe two hyphens in a domain name may work out well for you – don’t go overboard.
Web users are lazy and they don’t want to have to think about it when they are typing in your domain. Depending on your demographic – some users might not type your domain name in but rather search for your domain every time they want to go to your site. So make sure that your domain is easily found in Google so they don’t give up finding your site.
Which TLD (top level domain) should I buy?
This topic has been widely debated for many reasons. Most users default to typing in .com when they think of a websites name that they want to visit. SEO’s debate back and forth as to whether or not this choice will affect your rankings so I’m not even going to get into that.
Choosing a .com is typically your best bet – most people remember and trust .com’s more than any other domain.
If the perfect .com domain is taken then you may want to try and buy it from the person who has it. Unless your blog is a smaller affiliate site as opposed to a massive authority blog. If you buy the .net version and wait until your blog is an authority to go after the .com – the seller is going to want a much higher price.
Protect Your Niche
When you do decide on a domain name, you should buy several variations of it if you can. To protect your brand and your niche you’ll want to buy the .net and .org versions at least. You may also want to buy the plural versions as well.
This is assuming you plan to turn your blog into an authority in your niche – and not just an affiliate site to make some money from. Of course, both ways are valid, you just won’t need to protect yourself as much if you don’t plan to make an authority site.
Choose Your Domain Name
I can give you all of the tips that I know but that won’t help you actually click that purchase button. You need to complete the proper research and planning that I’ve outlined here but don’t let this step hold you up for too long.
As with all of the steps – taking action is better than overanalyzing everything. So do your due diligence, but get out there and buy your domain name!
The biggest tip I can give is to stay away from domain names with hyphens in them. Think of it this way… when you tell someone in person what your website is, it is very confusing to tell people and have them understand what you mean by the hyphen in the middle of the domain name. In the long run it will really hurt you if you do that.
Personally I don’t mind a domain that has one hyphen in it. Really, how many people are you expecting to type in your domain name? A site has to be exceptionally good for people to want to do that. I prefer basing domain choice on getting that first time visitor. If they want to come back, they can bookmark the site.
Yea, I’ve heard that it goes .com, .net, .org, then add hyphens. But if you have to add hyphens sometimes it’s better just to find an unused .com.
Choosing the right domain name is very important, it sticks with you for the remainder of your site unless you redirect to a new domain. Having a good domain name is good also but then there is the question if you are going for keywords in the domain or for branding.
Buying .net and .org too early might hurt you if you haven’t reach a stage where you can sustain the fee of your hosting. But it’s important to get them if your blog starts getting famous.