Choose and Register a Domain Name

The last step of this initial planning process is to choose a name and register a domain name for your new blog. If you already have a blog, it might still be worth reading this section. You could decide to start afresh with a new name and domain name, redirecting the existing one, particularly if your existing blog is new or unpopular at the moment.

Keep Your Blog on the Same Domain as Your Company

If the blog you are creating is for your company, the domain name choice is very straightforward. Assuming you already have a site for your company, you don’t need to register a new domain name for your blog; simply define a subfolder, such as yourcompany.com/blog.

The reason for going this route isn’t limited to URL consistency and the need to make a connection between your blog and company obvious to your customers. When you use the same domain for your main site as well as your blog, any SEO efforts you make on either side will end up benefiting (to a lesser extent) the other as well. This is because they both reside on the same domain. Your blog will also have better positioning from day one, thanks to the existing authority—in the eyes of search engines—of the main domain name.

Many companies will opt for a subdomain instead of a subfolder (e.g., blog.yourcompany.com). I don’t recommend that you do. Although it arguably looks better, it’s not as effective from an SEO standpoint. The existing authority of your domain name will not benefit your articles as much, and popular blog posts won’t end up benefiting your main site’s rankings in Google to the same degree, either.^[16]

Blog Name or Domain Name?

Before delving into the topic of picking a good name for your blog, let me state one important distinction that’s often overlooked. The name of your blog and your domain name are two different entities. You may opt for a domain name that’s different from your blog name for brevity reasons (nobody likes overly long domain names) or because the exact domain name is not available.

That said, having a domain name that matches your blog name is definitely recommended. It helps cut down on confusion and ensures that visitors remember your domain name more easily. So I strongly suggest you strive to find a domain name that matches your desired blog name. However, if a perfect match isn’t possible, do not turn your back on a short, easy-to-remember domain name.

Naming the Baby

Bestowing names on things looks easy from the outside, but the process can quickly become a time-consuming endeavor. You might think that it would take only a few minutes to find the perfect name, but once you start searching for a name, your brainstorming sessions can sometimes end up lasting for hours or even span the course of several days.

To help you decide on a good domain name for your blog (and its own corresponding name) much more quickly, I’ve listed a series of guidelines below that I tend to use when I find myself in this situation. Most of them should be common sense, but there might be a few novel ideas that will make the process of coming up with a good name easier and quicker for you.

Which TLDs?

As soon as you start searching for a domain name, you’ll realize that a ton of .com domain names have already been taken at this point in time. Often, this extends to the .net and .org TLDs (top-level domains) as well. So it can be tempting to simply opt for one of the many new TLD domains made available by the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). These are increasingly more common and accepted, but I would still recommend that you try as hard as you can to acquire a .com domain. At the end of the day, it’s still the king of TLDs.

Failing that, you should consider a .net or .org domain name. But you’ll need to accept that registering a .net or .org domain name when the .com version is held by a domainer (a domain name speculator who mainly buys domain names with the intent of reselling them for a large profit margin) implies that you’ll inevitably end up sending some of your traffic to the .com version of your site, as users may assume that your site is located on the .com address.

Conversely, if the .com is actually being used by someone with a real site, it’s common courtesy not to register the exact (or very similar) .net or .org version of the domain name, even if available. I’m pointing this out because you’ll inevitably create confusion for readers of both sites if you decide to go down this path.

A litigious individual or business may also decide to pursue legal action, which is annoying to deal with, whether the case is legitimate or not (this is even worse in the case of registered trademarks, where the owner is often required by law to protect it by going after violators).

.com, .net, and .org are the most SEO-friendly options and what most people expect to type in. SEO isn’t an exact science (by design) so there’s a debate on whether alternative TLDs will rank as well as .com, .net, and .org. In my opinion, you can rank any domain, but Google still has a bias toward the big three. If you must consider other options, I suggest staying away from confusing TLDs like “.co.” People will inevitably type “.com” instead.

In fact, SEO debates aside, the key problem is people’s perception of your domain name and their ability to remember it. Case in point, avoid .info because it was historically very cheap to acquire and therefore used and abused by spammers and scammers. Its reputation is somewhat tarnished.

In recent years, the TLD .io has become particularly popular among startups and programmers. If your blog is mostly aimed at programmers and you really cannot find any suitable .com domain name, .io might be an acceptable, if suboptimal, option. The same can be said for the increasingly popular .blog or even .codes. They aren’t my first choice, but they can work, and the latter lends itself to some neat-sounding domain names (e.g., yourname.codes).

If you’re trying to break into a local market with your blog, it may make sense to register a country-specific domain name. For example, a Canadian freelancer who’s interested in promoting her web design services locally may opt for a ccTLD (country code top-level domain) .ca domain name. Doing so also makes sense from an SEO standpoint, as search engines like Google absolutely love country-specific domain names when showing local search results.

In the example of the Canadian site, all things being equal, the .ca will edge out the .com’s SERP (search engine results page) positioning on Google.ca. Hosting your blog through a Canadian host would also help the cause, eh?

Keyword- or Brand-Based?

Search engines love keyword-based domain names and generally give them an unfair advantage in the result pages. Having the one or two main keywords you are targeting placed within your domain name will boost your blog ranks on Google and Bing (as well as on other search engines that, quite frankly, very few people in the Western world use).

The reason for this is that search engines take the keywords within your domain name as an indication of your site’s relevance to a given user’s query. If I’m looking for “old-fashioned programmer keyboards,” all things being equal, Google will assume that oldfashionedprogrammerkeyboards.com is more relevant than undermyfingertips.com (note that these are entirely fictional names, even if these sites do exist).

An SEO-friendly domain name is not the only aspect to consider, though. The human perception of your domain name is incredibly important in the case of a reputable technical blog. Most programmers I know would probably guess that oldfashionedprogrammerkeyboards.com is a commercial or spammy site of some sort. undermyfingertips.com on the other hand, would be seen as a clever name that could easily host a blog that reviews all kinds of keyboards.

In short, humans tend to remember and love good brand names, while search engines favor domain names with keywords. The trouble with brand names is that they take time and effort to establish, even when we’re just dealing with blogs and not company names.

My suggestion is to find the right balance. If your keyword-based domain name makes for a decent, catchy brand, definitely go for it. If not, see if mixing it up with other words can help. The textbook example of this is https://engadget.com, which managed to include the word gadget and the pun on engage in such a short brand domain name.

As a less clever example, I went with https://programmingzen.com because it’s easy to remember and is fairly “brand-ish” sounding while also containing the keyword programming.

A few years ago, it made sense to err on the side of keyword-rich domain names. These days, there’s some evidence that Google is giving this particular signal less weight than it did in the past. Ideally, a niche blog about Python should include the word Python in it, if only for no other reason than it immediately showcases what the blog is about to readers. But don’t obsess over having an exact match between your topic’s main keywords and your domain name.

Other Suggestions for Picking the Right Domain Name

So far we’ve covered the essentials of picking a domain name, but what about using hyphens in your name, choosing your domain length, and other things like that? Let’s briefly look at some other criteria that are important to keep in mind when picking out good domain names.

• Keep your domain name as short as possible. A short domain name is easier to type and is more memorable. (It also fits better on printed materials, such as T-shirts and business cards.) As a general rule of thumb, I try to keep domain names under twenty characters at most (TLD extension excluded) and comprise them of three words at the very most (ideally two).

• Choose a domain name that’s easy to pronounce and communicate. Any ambiguity in the way the domain name could be spelled should be eliminated. In light of this, I would also avoid using numbers if at all possible, because of the general ambiguity of spelling them in full vs. typing numerals (e.g., “ten” vs. “10”). Of course, between search engines, social media, bookmarking, and feeds, many of your visitors won’t actually type your URL into their browsers.

• Avoid hyphens if possible, and if not, limit them to one at most (like I did when I registered https://math-blog.com). Multiple hyphens have a tendency to cheapen your brand and make your site look less trustworthy. In fact, many Internet marketers have abused them over the years in an effort to register keyword-rich domain names.

• Use your own name as the domain name (provided that it’s not particularly complicated to spell and that you’re mostly aiming at promoting yourself through your blog). If such is the case, securing namelastname.com is a good idea. Just keep in mind that blogs of this kind tend to be perceived as more general and personal than your typical niche blog.

• Be careful with unintentional double meanings. The classic example of this faux pas is expertsexchange.com, which was intended to represent “Experts Exchange” but could all too easily be read as “Expert Sex Change.” That URL was abandoned in favor of https://experts-exchange.com, a hyphenated version with a much less ambiguous pronunciation.

• Use tools to quickly check results for your name ideas. As you try to come up with your unique domain name, you’ll struggle to find available names. Guaranteed. Tools like https://instantdomainsearch.com and https://domainsbot.com can help. I also recommend https://bustaname.com to generate and check many domain name variations from a few seed keywords.

Aftermarket Domains

Aftermarket domains are domains that have been registered and are available for sale by their owners, or that have expired and will soon become available for sale after a grace and redemption period.

It is possible to purchase a domain from a domainer either directly or via marketplaces like https://sedo.com or https://flippa.com. Whether you should take this approach, however, is an entirely different matter. Good domain names tend to be very expensive (e.g., thousands of U.S. dollars), so I wouldn’t recommend that you start your blogging career by making such a large investment. (If you find that your absolutely perfect domain name is for sale for a few hundred dollars, by all means, consider purchasing it.)

Expired domain names are also an option. You may be able to get some great names if you wait for the domains to become available. The grace period in effect allows existing owners ample time to change their minds and renew the domain after the expiration date. If they don’t do so after the redemption period is over, however, you can register the expired domain just as you would a regular domain name.

In practice, expired domain names are watched carefully by domainers. Valuable ones are hard to snap up, and there’s a whole industry around helping you get such domain names (for a hefty but not unreasonable fee, of course).

Register Your Domain

Countless ICANN accredited registrars exist, and the only real distinction between the lot comes down to TLD availability, price, ease of use, and the handling of disputes.

Based on this criteria, for .com domains, I’ve found https://namecheap.com and https://dynadot.com to be reasonable choices. Opt for one of the two, unless you register your domains with someone else already.

Once you’ve decided on an available name, the next step is to register your domain name (this should cost about $10--$15 USD per year for a .com domain).

Albeit not universally accepted, empirical evidence suggests that search engines prefer—all things being equal—domain names that won’t expire soon. The reason for this is that spammers rarely commit to domains for multiple years. Registering the domain for multiple years may offer a slight SEO advantage and, potentially, a cheaper yearly rate (provided you’re committed to this endeavor).

When you register a domain name, your own name, mailing address, and other personal information will be made available in a public WHOIS database.^[17]

If you wish to protect your privacy, many registrars offer WHOIS protection services in which their mailing address and business details are listed on your behalf. Namecheap, at the time of writing, offers this service for free.

If your WHOIS data is publicly available, you can expect to receive junk mail and assorted scams at the indicated mailing address. A common scam is to send you an official-looking form indicating that you might lose your domain name if you don’t renew it right away. They prey on the less-technically inclined, of course, but should someone fill out the form, they’d now be using the scammers as their domain registrar at the tune of outrageous yearly fees. In Canada, where I live, they even send it in envelopes that resemble actual, official government communication. Trust me on this, WHOIS privacy is worth enabling with your registrar.