Blogs are a lot like websites in many respects. In fact they are websites. They require constant maintenance, a good design and layout and interesting content and topics to talk about. This is just for starters though. There are many more things you can do to optimize your blog and send it on its way to success, but for now, I want to talk about something that is probably a lot more important for you to do as a new blogger, and that is coming up with a domain name for your new site.
Sounds easy doesn’t it?. To tell your the truth, it could take you days to finally find a good domain name that suites your site. A name that represents what your site is about and targets the right audience. Why you ask?…because all the ‘good ones’ are gone…or so you might think.
There are a lot of theories floating around out there about how long or short a domain name should be. Some experts say that your domain name should be the name of your site, short so people can remember and spend less time typing it into their browser. This also minimizes the possibility of making mistakes when typing it in. I agree with all of this, but for me it is not set in stone. You can have longer domain names that people can remember without jeopardizing your search results in the major search engines and worst yet, sending visitors to another site. That would mean one loss sale for you that you cannot afford. Here are a few strategies you can use.
Think outside the box. You have a creative side within you and it’s dying to come out. After all, you did come up with the idea of starting a new blog and what it was going to be about. Well that’s being creative, so let us begin. Get some pen and paper and write down what your blog is about. Highlight key features from the content of your blog and write those down as well. Begin to combine two to three word sentences that represent your blog. For example, hypothetically speaking, if your blog is about unique characteristics of the biggest and most rare Apalician Dog, then your 2-3 word sentences might look something like this “rarest Apalician dog” or “the rare Apalician” or “biggest Apalician dog”.
You have just created a set of domain names. Ideally, if you can land one that just says ApalicianDog dot com that would be great, but if it is already taken or being used by another site, then resort to the creative ones you made up. That’s fine, but even those can be taken as well sometimes but you don’t know that. Here is how you find out.
Run your created domain names through the domain name registrar and see if they come back as being in use already. You can typically find this service through your Web Hosting company and it’s free of charge. You get instant results back. If it hasn’t been taken then congratulations. If it has, the results will show you alternate names you can use, or use the same name with a different appendage for example,.org or .net instead of .com which are all fine.
Another strategy you can use is to buy existing domain names. There are sites that actually sell aftermarket domain names,and sites that sell domain names that have been dropped. Dropped domain names are names that website owners never bothered to renew or are no longer in use. They become available for you to purchase. A quick search on the web will capture those websites for you. Use these tips and tools and you will find a good domain name that is not necessarily “short”, but appropriate for your new blog.
