9 Tips to Choose The Best Domain Name

Tweet

This article is a part of the "How to Start a Blog" set of tutorials for beginners.

Choosing the perfect domain name is the first and most important step in pro blogging. And getting your hands on the best available domain is a very difficult task. Today, with millions of websites online, it becomes very hard to get the domain name you like.

I would suggest anyone to buy a domain from godaddy.com because of the following reasons:

• Cheapest domain name registration
• Promo coupons and discounts
• Easy to set up CNAME records for Blogger
• Good customer support

These reasons are enough I guess? You can always get a promo coupon by doing a Google search for them. These promo coupons let you buy your .com/.net/.org or any other domain at a much cheaper price. When I registered Blogging Panorama, I got it for $2.95 only.

And one line of recommendation from my side: NEVER go for free subdomains like .co.cc or .tk. If you are serious about your blog, then buy a domain and as I said earlier, you can get one for as low as $2.95 (by using Godaddy promo coupons)

Also read: Top 3 Affordable Domain Registrars

While looking for the best available domain name, always consider these 9 tips:

1. Keep the domain name related to your blog's niche. And avoid using your own name as domain name unless you site would be a personal blog or you are going to share personal success stories. Though there are good examples of blogs with domain name the same as the name of their owners like ZacJohnson.com. But you should consider your blog's niche more than your own name.
2. Do check if the name you are interested in buying is a trademark of any existing company. You should never do a mistake of registering a domain name which contains any commercial company's trademark in it. They may register a complaint against your registration and it can lead to the end of your domain. For example you cannot use 'WordPress' in your domain name because it is against their permission. Also you can't use any offensive word from any language in your domain name.
3. Try to keep your domain name understandable and short. I give more preference to 'understandable' than 'short' because it is more important that your visitors remember your site's address than they remember a random phrase like 'mpvr.com' and even if your domain name is 10-15 characters long but it is understandable and related to your blog's content, the search engines won't mind the long domain name.
4. AVOID exact keyword match domain because they are getting penalized by Google thanks to their latest algorithm updates.
5. Check if a similar name is already on the first page of Google. For example if you are thinking about the name 'TechyPC' then do a search for the words techy and PC. Suppose if there is a site with a name 'TechyGuy' or something very near to your interested name, then drop the idea. You won't want to compete with the other site to get on top of Google from the very first day of your registration.
6. Look for the domain name that matches your site's name like bloggingpanorama.com for 'Blogging Panorama'. Though there are some blogs who have different site name and domain name. One of them is Digital Inspiration (labnol.org)
7. Give more preference to .com/.net/.org than to .info/.co/.us/.uk/.in or any other country-TLD. Country TLDs are not good for global SEO as they tend to target only a specific geographic region.
8. Buying an old domain can be benefitial in some cases. Old domains have are more trusted by Google and can rank easier with all those ready made backlinks and traffic. Though today, the meaning of SEO is changing and it doesn't matter very much, but still it can be a little benefit. But be sure to check that the domain was used for the right purposes and was not blacklisted or banned from Adsense.
9. Check the existing PR and Alexa Rank of the domain if you are buying an old domain. Also check Internet Archive to find out how the domain was used earlier.

So these were my 9 tips to choosing the best domain name. Do you have any more suggestions? Do comment and let me know.

Image credit: Digitalart/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

This article is a part of the "How to Start a Blog" set of tutorials. Do read the remaining parts :)