You will find many articles on naming blogs, some I found out are useless, out of date or have the wrong information.
Before you even fill out a form to name your blog, take the time to put a lot of thought into this. Why? Your blog is your presence and will be with you for a long time, much like getting married…for better or worse, you are stuck with it!
By the way, the FIRST thing anyone should do is RESEARCH the niche you’re entering. If you don’t know that, STOP. Decide your niche, and research the niche for idea keywords, those that you can compete for. If you pick a keyword that is too difficult to compete for, you’ll never be located on searches, but you can sometimes fix that by adding a modifier, Insurance is a terribly competitive keyword ( 451,000,000 sites) and you’re fighting the biggies, but buggy insurance (1,700,000) gives you a much better chance to compete.
To help simplify what you need to do, I have searched for all the relevant data for you to think about before you name your blog.
The reason naming your blog is so important is because it sets the tone for the blog and it is the first line of marketing for your desired visitors. If a business names their blog ‘Jack’s Blog’ or ‘Jill’s Blog’, it isn’t descriptive enough for people at a first glance to decide if they even want to visit your blog.
Another important result of how you name your business blog, is that most blogging software will put the name of the blog in the title of the browser. Many search engines will list the title of a web page in their results page. If your blog name isn’t very descriptive and accurate, you will risk losing potential customers or prospects coming to your site if they stumble upon your blog from a search engine results page. A good example of this is which would you click on ” Sam4u” or “Samsboilerrepair?
1. Don’t Replace Letters With Numbers:
Don’t ever replace letters with numbers, this will only confuse people, and will damage how well you rank in the search engines For example, the new business blog is called marketingsearchnews.com, The CEO could have replaced the letters “e and t” with an 8, to look like this mark8ingsearchnews.com.
Although it might seem clever to do this, it’s actually quite the opposite.
Remember, people will talk about your site verbally (At least you want them to anyway), so if someone says “Hey I found this amazing website called ” marketingsearchnews.com” their friend will type in marketingsearchnews.com, they wont even think to use the number 8. The fact is you’ll get far less traffic (People) to your website. so just spell the names correctly
2. Make It Catchy:
That’s about all you need to know for usability and keywords, now you need to mix that all together and think of something catchy. For example, the blog called marketingsearchnews.com ( a shameful plug by the way 
), is descriptive and does exactly what it says, not only that but it’s got a few keywords in there too. It’s hard to give advice on being catchy as this will vary from industry to industry. It’s probably a good idea to get a notepad, write all your top keywords down, then write a bunch of descriptive words and words related to your website. Then you can just randomly pick a few words and see what you come up with. You can use the online dictionary as a help in words. My favorite is http://dictionary.reference.com/ which has a terrific thesaurus.
3.Use keywords
Put words that your visitor are likely to search for to find your website, in your domain name.
That sounds easy and it is, but ONLY if you know where to start. Simply guess what your visitors are likely to search for is a good start, but it is unlikely you will get many results
A better way would be to use a tool such as the overture keyword tool which can be found here at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
What you do is type in a word that is related to your site, so for this site it might be “marketing news”, then it will come up with a large list of keywords that people typed into search engines, relating to the keyword “marketing news”.
Not only that, but it also shows how many people typed in each specific keyword.
More often than not, you won’t be able to use the top keywords in the list as a domain name, for the obvious reason, they are already taken! So use your imagination.
Another factor to take into consideration is when you do a copy and paste of the top keywords into lets say Google, you will see how many websites have that search term. If you see that the results that are high as in a million results, then the fact is you will probably have a hard time competing with the other sites. So it is sometimes wiser to go down the keyword list and see what you can come up with.
4.Use Geo-Targeted Keywords ( what is that?)
A geo-targeted keyword is a keyword related to a specific area. For example “calgary boilers” would be an excellent example of a geo-targeted domain/keyword combination. If your audience is global then you wont need to do this, but if you’re only serving a specific area, then Geo-Targeted is for you.
An even better example of a good domain name for the above would be “calgary-boiler-repairs” if the website or business specialized in boiler repairs.
This is just to give you an idea of the possibilities, the more specific you are, the better.
5.Don’t Overuse Keywords:
It’s very important that you don’t overuse keywords in your domain name, for example “calgary-boiler-radiator-plumbing-electrical-repairs.com .”
There is no doubt that it contains many great keywords, but it’s far too specific and very long to type in and probably very difficult to remember.
The shorter it is, the easier it is to remember and type in, 4 words maximum,but that is even pushing it a bit.
6. Keep it brief and easy to type!
Keep the blog name short, and make it easy to pronounce and to spell. Try to pick a catchy name that people will like to repeat. Your blog’s name should be easy to type without too many letters. The title should be easy to spell, with all words spelled correctly. A purposely misspelled word or one with too many odd letters might be too confusing, especially if a reader has to type the URL over and over until he gets it right. A reader might forget a title if it’s long winded, intentionally misspelled or has nothing to do with the subject matter. If the blog name is short and to the point, he has a better chance of keeping it in mind.
7. Make your blog Reflective of the Topic you are choosing!
It should go without saying that the blog name should say something about the topic. “Sam’s Blog” tells me nothing about the blog, except that it belongs to Sam.
“Sams boiler repair” Blog tells me Sam is blogging about boilers. If I was a plumber, especially one who is wanting to further my education and techniques , I’ll want to remember this blog.
8.Pick a clear benefit of your services to use in your blog name:
You are in business to fill a need or want for your target market. If you aren’t doing that, you won’t be in business for long. Pick a clear and concise solution to a problem that your business provides for your target market, and try to incorporate that benefit into the name of your blog. You should end up with a name that will include relevant keywords and also contain a benefit for your clients or customers ( as in the example calgary boiler repairs). Following these steps will give the title of your business blog a more relevant and enticing name.
10. Lastly Make a List
Make a list of names you feel would best reflect your blog. As you look at each potential name, ask yourself the following questions:
* Does this name reflect my blog’s purpose?
* If I saw this blog name in a search, would I be inclined to click on it?
* Will other bloggers and blog readers see the title and perhaps consider this blog a good resource?
* Will the name work for years to come?
If the answer to all of these is yes, you have yourself a winner.
What ideas do you have to help you think of names?
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