Are planning to create your own self-hosted blog?
If so, one of your most critical tasks will be choosing a great domain name that matches your blog’s niche, keywords and title.
Your blog’s URL needs to be short enough for readers to remember, yet long enough to provide at least a hint at what your blog’s posts will be about.
Back when I was in the planning stage of creating this blog, I wanted a domain that included three things:
1 – My name (in order to give the blog a personal touch)
2 – The word ‘tips’ (since tech tips are what the blog is all about)
3 – The word ‘daily’ (since I planned to publish at least one new post each day)
Naturally, the first potential domain name that I came up with was RicksDailyTips.com, and typing it into Godaddy’s domain search box revealed that it was indeed available. I registered it on the spot, and the rest is history.
But what if RicksDailyTips.com had already been registered by someone else?
It’s pretty rare at this point in time when your first choice for a domain name is actually still available. If this one had been taken I would have tried to find something that was as close to it as possible.
Leaving a word out (i.e. RicksTips) occasionally works, but not very often. Since available short domains are fewer in number than long ones, in most cases we have to either substitute one word for another or add a word (i.e. RicksDailyTechTips).
It’s also a good idea to try to match your domain name up with the actual name of your blog as best you can.
It worked out perfectly in my case since the blog title and domain are exactly the same, but that won’t always be possible.
When it isn’t, just try to get the two as closely aligned as possible, even going so far as to adjust the actual name of the blog to match the domain if need be (but don’t choose a BAD blog name just so it will match a good domain).
By the way, if the .com version of your preferred domain name isn’t available and you’re having trouble finding something reasonably close, consider registering the domain as a .net.
In other words, instead of RicksDailyTips.com I could have easily considered RicksDailyTips.net.
Bottom line: Choosing a great domain name is one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make once you decide to start blogging. The tips above can help you do just that!
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