How to Choose the Best Domain Name for Your Blog

L ooking for tips on how to choose a domain name for your blog? You're in the right place!

Figuring out a good name when you start a new blog is hard enough, but it gets trickier when you have to find an available domain name too.

Chances are, a lot of the blog domain name ideas you come up with are already taken or owned by someone who wants a lot of money for them. So then, how can you choose a good domain name for your blog? 

We want to help you choose from the BEST domain names for your blog, so we’re going to dive a little deeper. 

Here are some tips to help you choose a domain name for your blog that’s right for you AND will help your blog stand out online.

Why Your Blog Domain Name Matters

Your domain name is an important part of your blog. It’s not just your address on the world wide web – it does so much more:

• Branding: Your blog name sets you apart from the competition.
• First Impressions: When you tell people how to find your blog, you’ll need to give your domain name. First impressions are important!
• Discovery: Your domain name should be easy to spell, say, and type, otherwise you’re going to frustrate and miss out on a lot of readers.

Choosing the wrong domain name for your blog can hurt your branding and hinder your growth.

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Choosing the wrong domain name for your blog will start you off on the wrong foot. It can have a big impact and hold you back in the long run.

The better your blog domain name, the easier it will be to get more traffic, keep them on your site, convert them into subscribers, and get more links and shares on social media.

Now that you know why your choice is so important, let’s take a look at how you can get started choosing the RIGHT domain name for your blog.

What If You Don’t Know What to Blog About?

We often get asked how to choose a domain name for a blog when you don’t know what you’re going to blog about.

Our advice is to pick a blog niche first!

Think about it – it’s kind of like buying property to open a store when you haven’t decided what you’re selling yet. Your location and the space itself can end up totally wrong for your business.

Of course, buying a domain is not as big an investment as buying real estate (especially if you’re getting a free domain).

Still, why take the risk of buying the wrong domain?

Make sure to choose your blog niche first!

Once you’ve done that, you’re ready to follow this guide.

How to Choose the Best Domain Name for Your Blog

Since it’s getting harder to find a great domain name that’s still available, we’re going to go beyond the typical ways to come up with the best domain name for your blog.

If you’ve already chosen a blog niche or have some blog name ideas and know what topics you’ll cover, these steps will help you figure out the best blog domain name.

You can go through these steps to come up with a shortlist of 5-10 blog domain names ideas.

Idea 1: Name the Benefit of Your Blog

This idea uses the answer to the question, “Is this blog for me?” in the URL to explain what your audience will get out of your site. For example, howtohockey.com, doubleyourfreelancing.com, and iwillteachyoutoberich.com.

To find the benefit of your domain name, ask yourself what readers will get out of your content. Then, use one of these two templates to create it:

• I will teach you to [achieve result or do activity]
• How to [achieve result or do activity]

Idea 2: Name Your Blog Audience

This idea is based on the target audience your blog is meant to serve. So, copyblogger.com is for copywriters and bloggers, campergroove.com is for campers, viewfromprague.com is for travelers to Prague. 

Use one of these templates to find a good domain name that uses your blog audience:

• [Noun] + only
• [Adjective] + [Noun] + only at the end of the phrase
• [Adjective] + [Audience Name]

Idea 3: Name the Topic of Your Blog

This idea uses the topic of your blog as the URL, so readers will know what you’re writing about when they see it. For example, zenhabits.com, insightfulmanager.com, goodfoodrunning.com, and kayaksupfishing.com.

Warning: Avoid being too cute or clever when trying to put your topic into the domain name. Being clever is the enemy of domain names for blogs. They’ll confuse your readers to the point where they’ll not stay long on your site. And a high bounce rate might impact your blog SEO (search engine optimization), so you won’t get as much traffic.

Discover a creative name for your blog with one of these topic templates: 

• Daily [Topic] tips
• [Topic] tips
• [Adjective] + [Topic]

Idea 4: Use Your Name

You can also use your name in your domain, which can be good to demonstrate your thought leadership on the topic. For example, LilachBullock.com, ValGeisler.com, or NeilPatel.com. Their names are their brands, and so people know what they’re going to get when they type in the URL. 

However, if you want to build your blog’s brand separate from your own identity, or eventually sell your blog, using your own name is not the way to go. 

Idea 5: Name What You’re Doing With Your Blog

This idea flips the topic around to be about what you’re doing as a blogger, rather than what your audience is doing or wanting to learn how to do. For example, Foundr.com tells the stories of founders, entrepreneurs, and business owners. MakingSenseofCents.com tells stories about personal finance. TheExpertVagabond.com is a travel blog about living a carefree life while traveling. 

Here’s a couple of templates you can use to create a domain from what you’re doing as a blogger: 

• [Blogger or audience] + [pursuit]
• [Action] the [object]

Idea 6: Use a Domain Name Generator

If you have a list of keywords, topics, or general ideas, but you’re still struggling to come up with a good domain name, you should try our blog domain name generator.

Just type in a few words into the domain name search tool and see what domain name suggestions pop out. Try searching on your hobbies, your favorite sports, the types of books you like to read, or the food you like to eat. 

By now, you’ll have a shortlist of blog names you could work with, but there are a few more things you need to do to narrow it down to the best one. 

Refining Your Domain Name Short List

Now that you have a list of ideas, how do you choose the best domain name?

You’ll want to go through your list and consider getting rid of any domains that are:

1. Longer than 20 characters. Anything longer than that is hard to remember and hard to type, and can cause you to lose site visitors. Unless you’ve registered all the typo variations of your domain, you’ll lose traffic and search engine results.
2. Include confusing letter combinations. A domain name with multiple letter combinations is harder to type. You’ll lose a lot of traffic because people will either misspell your domain, or they’ll forget a letter and get redirected to someone else’s site. — for example, naturessampler.com or targettopicsstore.com. 
3. Hard to pronounce. Your domain should always be easy to say and write since you’ll never know when you’ll be asked to share it live. For example, herbgardening4u.com might seem like a good idea, but you’ll forever be explaining that it’s the “number four” and the “letter u” at the end. 
4. Mention brand or trademarked names. Your domain name should be unique to you, even if you’re talking about a brand or trademarked name. The whole point of a trademark is to protect it from illegal use, so it doesn’t harm their reputation. Unless you want to spend all of your blog’s income on lawyers to fight any brand infringement lawsuits, it’s best to avoid them entirely.
5. Use obscure abbreviations. It can be tempting to include abbreviations in your domain name, especially to get under that 15 character limit. But when you use them, you might rule out beginners that don’t understand the term you’re abbreviating.
6. Include hyphens. Hyphens are a big risk, because any similar site without the hyphens will probably get all of your traffic. Why? Because people forget to add the hyphens when they type the URL in their web browsers. So, if your site is herb-gardeners.com and there’s already a site called herbgardeners.com, guess which one they’ll visit first? Not yours.
7. Have too many keywords. Domains that are “keyword-rich” or “keyword-targeted” can be viewed negatively by search engines. Just think about how senior-care-respite-home-finder.com sounds when compared to seniorliving.com or seniorlifecare.com. Use only obvious keywords, if you must, but generally speaking, try to avoid more than two.
8. Are too narrow in focus. While your domain name should be narrow enough to be unique and gain good traffic, it should leave you room to expand. Your domain will earn SEO love over time as it builds links and authority, so you’ll want to keep using it. A flexible domain will allow you to do this, no matter where your blogging journey takes you.  

Finally, it’s time to run your choice through a blog domain name checker to make sure it’s available. Domain registrars like Domain.com can help you with this. Run through your shortlist on the registrar to see which ones are available. If you also need web hosting for your new blog, we recommend Bluehost.com, where you can register the blog domain free when you purchase hosting. 

Should You Use a Unique Domain Extension?

“Dot com” is the ultimate standard for domain names.

But there are so many other endings (called “domain extensions”) available nowadays. Should you try something different?

We recommend sticking with the .com version for your blog.

Why? Because it’s the one most people think of when they hear a domain name. Even if they see the entire URL, they automatically append .com to the end. If you’re using a different one, you may lose out on a lot of easy traffic. Mobile devices also default to .com, as most have a button on their keyboards that let you add .com in one keystroke. 

You could consider a country-specific extension if you’re going to be blogging in a different language, or you only want to appeal to people in that country. That would be an extension like co.uk for Great Britain, .de for Germany, or .se for Sweden.

Is .Blog a Good Domain?

One of the newer extensions to be released is .blog. If you’re starting a blog, it almost seems natural to choose it, so your blog could be herbgardensonly.blog or learnjapanese.blog. 

This might seem like a good idea now, but it may not be the best choice long-term.

That’s because it forever ties the domain to the notion that it’s a blog and nothing else.

If you wanted to start an online store or expand it into something else, you can’t. People will see that .blog extension and wonder why there’s a mismatch between the domain and the site content. 

The same applies if you wanted to sell the domain or the website. Unless your buyer is specifically looking for a .blog domain name, your pool of buyers is much smaller. 

Your blog domain name plays a vital role for your website. It’s not always possible to claim your first choice. That’s when you’ve got to get creative.

We hope these tips will help you pick one of the best domain names ever!

Next, you’ll probably want to see our ultimate guide to starting a new blog.

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