You are interested in starting a blog– right ? I guess that’s why you came to read my article. Every new project or product or business or website or what ever has to go through a “naming” phase, in which we give a unique and interesting name to the same. A unique, catchy and easy to remember name is crucial for the success of a business, a website, a product or a blog.
I have already written a detailed and in depth article on How to Find a Good Domain Name for your business. In this article, I have analysed many famous domain names and developed a set of methods through which you can come up with an interesting domain name very easily.
You might be wondering, why I have dedicated a whole new article to finding a name for your blog; when I had already written a detailed article on same subject. The reason is simple. My other article is general in nature and applies to all types of business; be it an offline business, a web application, a blog or even a social network. In this article, I attempt to focus on aspects related to naming a blog. So let’s begin to generate blog name ideas.
1. A Blog is a Brand identity
The very first aspect that you should keep in mind is that your blog is going to be your brand identity. You are going to be known in the name of your blog and at the same time, your blog is going to be known by your name as well. If you need real life examples, Darren Rowse is known as the founder of Problogger.net. If some one tells you the name -Darren Rowse, you immediately connect his name with his blog Problogger.net. If some one else tells you about a website he found recently and mentions Problogger.net – you immediately connect the blog name with Darren Rowse. So this is going to happen in your case too. People are going to keep you, your name and your blog name in their memories. They should be able to connect everything properly when they hear your blog name.
2. 3E Test – Easy to Remember, Easy to Spell and Easy to Pronounce
A good blog name should pass this test. It should be easy to remember, easy to spell and easy to pronounce. This rule is very important in winning long term readers and customers. Consider a scenario like this. In January 2014, a guy named Peter decided to start a website. He didn’t knew how to do that. So he Googled and came to my article on How to start a Website. He read the article and he liked it. But unfortunately he didn’t had enough money to start a website at that point of time. So what will he do ?He might postpone his attempt to start a website. After 6 months, he makes enough money and decides to start the website. He wish to read my article once again. How will he identify me quickly after 6 months ? Here comes the importance of an easy to remember domain name. My domain name is RahulDigital- which is coined based on method 4 described in How to Find a Good Domain Name. Though its not an outstanding domain name, it certainly scores mark on the 3E test. RahulDigital – is definitely easy to remember, easy to spell and easy to pronounce. Finally there’s a small “quirky” element that makes every reader think about the domain name once again – that’s the tricky part. You read RahulDigital and the immediate question in mind is – what a name is this ? How can you fry dollars ? Human brain works in a suggestive manner. The more you tell your brain about something, the more its likely to remember about it. Here an additional layer of thoughts happen about the domain name RahulDigital – in the form of a confused question. It helps people to remember this name easily.
3. Avoid using SEO keywords in your blog name
If you are not very familiar with what is SEO and keyword, then I am speaking about using words related to your topic or industry in blog name. For an example, if you are planning to start a blog on vegetarian recipes; then using the word recipes or vegetarian on your blog name can be considered as using a keyword. If you can come up with a really interesting name with a keyword in it, I recommend you go ahead with that. The whole point in avoiding keyword based names is that you can stand out from a hundred other vegetarian recipe blogs who is going to use keyword rich domain names. For example, you started VegetarianLife.com and built it for 1 year. Within this year, you will see many other blogs in your topic with similar names like VegetarianDay.com, VegetarianDishes.com etc. All these blogs are catering to the same audience at any point of time – people who are interested in veg recipes. How will you stand out then ? A much better option is to choose a unique domain name like GreenLife.com – which resonates the topic but do not use a keyword or a general word about the topic.
4. Give importance to Name than Extension
Some people are really adamant about coining a name with .com extension. I see no point in that. These day’s its very hard to come up with an available .com domain name, unless you have money to purchase a premium domain name. You should give importance to the name than its extension.