How to Choose a Domain Name for your Website or Blog

Now that you have decided to start a website or blog you need to think of a domain name. For a brand it is easy to choose a domain name. The problem will arise when your brand name is already taken. The best thing to do is get a name with a keyword in it. Keyword means words that your target audience is typing in the search engine when they look for stuff in your industry or niche. In other words you need to know your target audience inside out.

How to choose a domain name for your blog or personal website

If you already have a brand name your decision is made for you. But you will have to check how useful it is for search engine optimization, SEO – keywords for search engines like I explained earlier. If you use a keyword in your domain name it will give your domain one extra feature to be popular with search engines. If your brand name is not available as you would like it, then I’d say you have an excuse to include a keyword that best describes one key benefit of your product. 

Extend Name to Include your Product or Service

For example your brand of umbrellas is named Sun. If sun.com is unavailable you could go for sunumbrellas. It will probably be available because it is a compound of two words. Now it could look funny and you may be afraid people might read that sunum brellas but those fears are unfounded. Unless your brand name is sun brass hooks. If you want to be known in a particular field then you could choose words from that field or industry like software or cleaners. Bloggers can add names about the niche they are going to write about like pastries or cakes. If you have a nickname you could use that along with a keyword.

Use word combinations that make sense and are memorable

Don’t use combinations that seem smart, but no one is looking for. Instead try memorable. If the domain name can be easily  remembered then it is a good name. Avoid numbers unless they are part of your name. Avoid word combinations that include double letters after being combined. I am not talking about the double s or double o in brass or hooks but something like teddecorations or maccarpets or theblackknight. Also avoid hyphens and full stops.

Use SEO Keyword Domains

When I keep telling you use keywords you will wonder how to get hold of a list of keywords for ready reference. I use many tools including ubersuggest and keywordtools.io but since you are going to rely on google to bring you most of the traffic I think you should get familiar with the Google Keyword Planner.

Google Keyword Planner

Find something called a Google keyword planner. It comes free with your Gmail account and there are enough tutorials out there to how you how to use it. The GKP will give you the most relevant and frequently used keyword in your industry and you can use that as part of your domain name. This name will have a higher chance of showing up in a search engine result page SERP. However, your domain should be short and not too long and people should not abandon typing it and type just the keyword instead.

Exact Match Domains

At some point in planning you may be tempted to use exact match domains or in other words using the exact phrase GKP throws up. Like designedbirthdaycakes or worse cakeshopsnearme. However, this kind of domain name could be considered spam by search engine software. This practice also restricts your scope of work and you will be confined to talk about birthday cakes. People seeking good birthday cake design suggestions may overlook you if you are named cakeshopnearme. And this kind of Domain name does not guarantee you a higher place in the search engine ranking.

Domain Name Extensions.

Domain Name extensions means the .com, .net, .org attached to your domain name. You will find enough advice by experts on how to choose your domain extension and why to choose one. Personally I prefer dot com simply because people assume you have that extension if you tell them about your brand. For example if you tell a person to type sun umbrellas dot org when he is looking for you online, he may remember the name because it is simple to remember – you understand now why your name should be simple and memorable, but chances are that when he sits down later to type out your domain name he will automatically type dot com. That is just a small inconvenience if you have good reasons to choose other extensions.

Domain name suggestion websites

There are many websites that can help you to choose a domain name if you feed keywords to the software. You can experiment with them.

To summarize you need to do thorough research about the words your target audience is typing in the search engine and if you do not know the target audience you should do thorough research on that too. Best of Luck.