Know Your Audience
Before you start even thinking about the blog name, you need to understand who the blog will be for. This information is vital for not only promoting your blog efficiently but also choosing the blog name.
To determine your audience, think about who you want to read your blog. The most efficient way to do it is to imagine a typical reader and answer the following questions:
- Is your typical reader male or female?
- How old is this person?
- Where is he or she from?
- What does he or she do for a living?
- What are his or her interests and hobbies?
- Why would he or she enjoy reading your blog—that is, what needs can your blog satisfy?
Having determined your audience, you can move on to choosing a blog name that will attract your typical reader.
Types of Blog Names
As experience has shown, there are two common types of the blog names: generic and branded.
Generic names reflect the core theme of the blog. They are usually optimised for search engines and may include the main keyword—for example, new-york-tours.com or praguecastle.com.
On the other hand, if you stumble upon a blog with a branded blog name, you will not understand what it’s about until you open it. The blog’s name may be just the author’s name or a phrase that doesn’t make sense but is easy to remember—for example, boorooky.com.
There is a fine line between these two general categories. Besides, a generic blog name could become a branded one if the blog becomes widely popular and recognisable.
Before You Rush Into Naming Your Blog
There are two things that you should keep in mind when you start looking for that one perfectly catchy blog name.
First, the blog name must be short. If you are tempted to use keywords or keyword phrases, keep in mind that the impact on the SEO may be insignificant, but the search rates for your brand name might also be increased. More importantly, such blog names tend to look awful to a casual user. However, if you manage to come up with a good blog name containing your main keyword, go ahead and use it.
Second, pay attention to choosing a top-level domain (TLD). If you plan to start a commercial website, you should opt for a .com domain name. In the case of a blog, you can use any TLD that fits well—for instance, .me or .ly let you play with words and make something like travelwith.me or borntof.ly. If your audience lives in one particular country, you can use the TLD of that country, such as .ca or .co.uk.
It is no big deal which TLD you choose in terms of SEO except for the cases when the TLD is connected with a certain region. However, keep in mind that if there are already blogs with the same name but a different TLD, you will have to compete with them. They could also intercept readers who are looking for your blog but don’t remember the TLD.
SEO Contribution to a Good Brand Name
Optimization for your domain name matters because domain names interspersed with keywords are not very effective nowadays. It is highly recommended to create a domain name and URL as brief as possible (Google research indicates that short URLs are clicked-on twice as often as long URLs). Clickability is very important because it basically equals traffic.
Search engines also pay great attention to the domain levels—thus, second-level domains are considered less important (it is believed that more side information is posted there rather than main information).
Of course, keyword relevancy in a domain name is crucial. It can be pretty difficult to achieve, however—you either can’t find suitable relevant keywords or can’t cram them into your name. In such a case, you can partially include the keywords in URL.
SEO must be taken into account if you want your domain name to bring you traffic, customers, and sales.
How to Find a Blog Name That Is Memorable
There are many methods for creating a blog name. However, experience shows that the most efficient way to be creative and unique is to brainstorm all the possible names for your blog (the more unique or weird they are, the better) and choose the best one. Here are six tips for finding a domain name that will be your recognisable brand.
1. Write Down Associations
Think about the topic of your future blog, its tone, and its potential content. Open an Excel or Google spreadsheet or, if you are old-fashioned, a notebook, and write down all the words that you associate with your blog. Do not stop when you have 10 or 20 words or phrases—keep writing everything that comes to your mind, no matter how weird or banal it may seem. Usually, after 50–100 words or phrases, the most unexpected and unique associations will find their way into your brain.
Once you have written literally every word you could think of, you can turn to the Internet for help. Look up the synonyms for the words you have already written. You can also try looking at thesauruses that allow you to search for related words and idioms. For instance, you can use Merriam-Webster Thesaurus or Thesaurus.com.
If you are choosing the domain for a project that is not in English, be careful—most of the domain zones won’t allow you to use any letters those found in English. That means you cannot use ‘Ü’ or other letters with the diacritics.
2. Choose a Symbol
To make a blog name that is recognisable, you can come up with an animal or an object that will be your logo. For instance, this is how the name ‘Dodo Pizza’ was created—the website’s logo is a rare dodo bird. To stand out, opt for names of species that are rare and are unknown to most people.
3. Translate Keywords Into a Different Language
Google Translate or any other dictionary can help you out if you are struggling to come up with a blog name. Just take the words that you associate with the topic of your blog and translate them, for example, into Finnish or Spanish. You can also try out Latin words or prefixes such as ‘proto’, ‘Omni’, ‘neo’, and so on.
4. Combine and Edit Words
Take a look at all the words you have written down so far. Now you can play with them. Combine adjectives with nouns, verbs with adverbs, nouns with nouns, and so on. You can also add suffixes such as ‘valley’, ‘box’, ‘today’, and ‘insider’ and prefixes such as ‘top’, ‘pro’, ‘go’, ‘super’. You can find lists of typical suffixes and prefixes for domain names online. If you want to make your blog name look unique, double the last letter of the word—for example, ‘blogg’—or omit vowels—for example, ‘blg’.
There is one tip you should pay special attention to: the most memorable blog names are either well-rhymed or are alliterations.
5. Try Using Blog Name Generators
If you still don’t feel that you can choose a blog name from the options that you have come up with, give blog name generators a try. They vary in their functionality, but the majority of them have a nice bonus: they make sure that all the domain names they suggest are not taken yet. Services like Wordoid can even help you make up new words according to the rules of the language you choose. Lean Domain Search adds common prefixes and suffixes to the keyword(s) of your choice.
6. Shortlist the Best Blog Names
Now it is time to make a choice. We know how hard it can be, so we suggest rating all of the potential blog names and selecting the ones with the highest scores. Remember to stick to names that are short and unique. You could also pick the top five names and show them to several people who fit your audience profile. Ask them which name they find to be the catchiest one, and to repeat it to you in several days to see if they can remember it.
That’s Not All!
To avoid the most common pitfalls, there are two things you need to do before falling in love with your blog name.
Make Sure the Domain Name Is Available
In case you haven’t done so yet, check that the domain names you want have not been taken by someone else. You can use Instant Domain Search or Name.com to do check. Such websites also suggest other TLDs or domain names if the one you have chosen is not available.
Also, make sure your domain name hasn’t been banned to avoid any SEO issues in the future. Check the history of the domain name and its links via a web archive service or ahrefs.com.
If you found a brilliant option but it is already taken, don’t worry. First, check to see if the domain is for sale. Go to the page and take a look. If there is no working project, search for the domain name on platforms such as Sedo.com. If the domain has been taken, is not used, and is not for sale, look at the Whois admin contacts and send an offer to buy it.
Check for Copyright Infringements
Some blog names may belong to other companies. Such names are protected by copyright laws, so you will not be able to use them unless you are given the permission by the respective company. To avoid lawsuits, make sure your blog name is not connected with any brand or product that already exists. You can do so by visiting copyright.gov or any other state government website that holds this information.
Coming up With a Blog Name: The Bottom Line
No matter how tricky it may seem, coming up with a blog name can be enjoyable. Remember to keep it short and be unconventional, check if the domain name is available, and dedicate enough to the whole process. Let yourself be creative and keep in mind the tips we have shared, and your blog will have the catchy name it deserves!
Choosing the blog name is just a beginning of your journey. Later, you’ll come across many more questions, such as how to monetise a website, how to write good content, and so on.