Domain Name 101: How to Choose a Great Name for Your Blog

Simple new domain names are scarce. Finding one, a good one, is almost impossible. For this reason, many site owners suffer from the mistake of making domains that are not related to the site they are working on or they trap themselves in long keyword infested names that are too long to type. Others make domains with intentional spelling errors or unnecessary marks in between words.

Knowing how to come up with a good domain is the key to a good future of a website or a blog. The domains of top blogs or websites on the internet reflect his reality. In general, we find that domain names are like personal names, in some cases, they identify who you are.

They sometimes tell your background, your ethnicity or your parent’s belief, and many more. A domain name is part of a brand, if not a brand by itself. Then it should be chosen carefully.

So the big question here is how I should choose a good name in the midst of mediocre domains and great ones that are already taken? Finding a good domain, indeed, is time taking and painstaking, if not followed a proper procedure.

In this post, we learn about domain names with a metaphor of conceiving to birth to growth and survival in the competitive internet world. We will discover the process of domain making from start to the end.

What is Domain Name?

What is domain name is one of the questions I am asked frequently. Imagine a domain name as a personal name, given for a human. That name represents that individual. This means that person has association in some way to that word or to that name. Sometimes the word defines how people look to that individual.

And in most times it does not. Why? Because a name is just a representation given by parent of someone else without further analysis of that child, It is emotional rather than logical. Besides, there could be more than one individual with the same material.

The case of the domain is different. First, a domain name should not be an emotional representation of your website. It is rather a brand that represents the site itself. Second, a domain name only represents one site. There cannot be more than one site with the same name.

This means domain names are like a barcode, they are unique and they belong to the individual or the company that registered them. For example, penzine.com represents the site that you are reading now. No other website is found registered with this name.

However, similar names with other extensions, other than dot com, could be possible. Checking the availability of a domain is easier these days on the internet.

How Can I Check the Availability of the Domain Name I Like?

There are many services that I personally use to check domain availability. Bustaname and whois.net are few of them. However, you should be conscious where and where you are seraching for names.

I personally like to admit that I have lost at least 3 ‘nice’ domain names because I didn’t register it as soon, and one day I came to the website to check the availability of the domain, it is already taken. The domain names were registered on the same date by the same company. That was a pity.

What Are The Criteria for Good Domain Name?

Most single word domain names are already taken. For example, it is improbable to find single word names such as ‘golf dot com’ or ‘word dot com’ or ‘pen dot com’. Not only single words, double and triple word domains are also scarce. Recently two worded domains are also becoming scarce. This increases the time to find a good domain name that is short, brandable, and memorable. Here are tips to choose domain names that fit this image.

1-unique name– For Rand Fishkin of MOZ one of the necessary criteria is to never use a plural hyphenated or misspelled version of the original word.

2-Brandable-Rand also advices that you should set yourself apart with a brand. For him branded domains are better than domains with clutter of three and more words. For him, doman ‘bankrate dot com’ is better than ‘mortagageforyourhome dot com’.

3-Easy to remember–Pat Flynn advices on his site smartpassiveincome that domain names should be short and easy to remember. This minimizes the hard work of domain memorability.

4-Use keywords- Keywords in domain show the purpose of the site right away. This means golf.com expresses the site is about golf, probably not about something else.

• 129 Unregistered Domain Names you can Use Today Free
• A simple (but best) guide How to Pick a Domain Name

How to Choose a Domain Name?

As we have discussed above, finding single and double domain names is hard. Some bloggers suggest coming up with five or more keywords and try to coin them manually.

The problem with this method is, first, it is harder than it looks to find enough keywords or untaken words that could be combined and makes a new domain name. Second, it is also time taking. So there should be a method for finding domain names that are time-saving and better in quality.

Here are three domain name finding tools on the internet. I have chosen these based on their different algorithm of keyword generation; their ease of use. Here are the three-domain name suggesting sites I use.

1-Bustaname-Bustaname has two different methods of finding names. First, you add the brainstormed keywords to the word combiner. Then you can right-click on each keyword and find a synonym and add it to the keyword list. This increases the potential of finding synonym keywords.

For example, let’s make an imaginary challenge. Let’s assume we needed to find a name for a kitten selling website. First, of course, I will add the term kitten to the word combiner. Right-click on the term suggested to me the synonym word ‘cat’. So I clicked add. Then I added other keywords like line, space, life, etc manually.

Bustaname itself will combine and suggested me available possible pair domain names. These include kittenspace, kitten lines that are memorable and brandable as well. Further and detailed research will guarantee better domain names. As soon as you think you found an alternative names you can save it for review.

What if you don’t get what you want or if you are not satisfied? Then try the domain maker. The Bustaname domain maker works in two ways. One it suggests unrelated brandable names that are not found in English vocabulary.

Second, it will add suffix and prefix on the word you have entered and it will suggest a new word.

2- Leandomainsearch bases its suggestion based on adding random English words to the original word. Unlike bustaname, where you have to add the words yourself, leandomainsearch finds words and will couple it to your word, For example, You only have to write the original word ‘kitten’ then Leandomainsearch will give you results like kittengroup, onekitten,kittendeals,kittenportal and more.

You can arrange the suggestions based on popularity, length, and alphabetical order. The site also saves your search history.

3- Wordoid is a bit same to bustaname’s domain maker link. What wordoid basically do is it receives the original letter and adds prefix and suffix on it. The prefix and suffix may not be known English words rather they are letters that makes the new formed word look a new word that makes sense.

There are known domain names that were made with a similar method that include Shopify that added the suffix ‘ify’ to the word shop. Wordoid suggestion could be controlled using settings on the left. The settings include search based on language, quality of the domain, number of words, and the placement of suffix and prefix.

4-Expired domains – Expireddomains brings you expired domain names that are on the market to buy them or to own them for free. Once previous owners drop the domains, then you will have the chance to own them.

If you like any domain name here, then you need to register them as soon as possible before someone else does. However, most of the good rank deleted domain names are taken by registrars and domain ‘collectors’ before you even see them. It is better to focus on acquiring names that respect our criteria.

Case: The Story of richrow.com

The idea of richrow was to talk about writing, blogging and making and saving money. After a while the journey to finding domain name continued.

First, I started finding the domain name based on the same keyword to the idea. As you could imagine the keywords could be ‘rich’ ‘money‘ magazine’ ‘income’ and so on. I had four choices to come up with a new name. These are:

• My Word + new word
• My Word+ suffix
• Prefix + My word
• My Word+ unknown word

Out of these searches I wanted to try row that came from joining the group, which is the one percent. The domain ‘rich row’ was short, sweet, and has only 2 syllables.

Do you like my way of finding a good domain name? comment below.

Guarding Your Domain Name

Register domain name.

Now you have found your domain name. What is next? Next should be registering it. You can register a domain for cheap for a year or more.

Finally, single word domain name is scarce. Good domain name needs more than keyword clutter. It should be brand able and expandable. Finding one is time taking. It needs strategy and process. Using word generators for own advantage is necessary.

I hope you have found the article useful. Please comment below.                                   

• 129 Unregistered Domain Names you can Use Today Free
• A simple (but best) guide How to Pick a Domain Name