Choosing The Perfect Name For Your Website

When I started my first blog, IMExposure, it took me almost 2 months to come up with its name. And for Tom Scott Scion, it took almost a month.
In both the cases, there were a lot of alternatives in my head and I ended up cancelling each one of them, because they just didn’t sound perfect. They didn’t match the blogs in the way I wanted. I needed something which would make total sense and still be catchy enough without being over-the-top. I needed something short and quick and exactly to-the-point.
Thinking of a blog name is not that hard if you know what you are looking for. Sometimes the perfect name just pops up in your head at an unusual time and it proves to be a bang-on title for your blog. But this doesn’t happen very often, and most of the blogginers (read blogging beginners) are left with the manual, hard way to choose the perfect blog name.
I believe in planned and well-arranged work. Doing something step-by-step does lead you to good results.
So let me take you through the whole process to choose the perfect name for your blog step-by-step.What is Your Blog About? Who is it For?
This is the first question that you should ask yourself when you have to choose the name of your blog.The audience DOES matter.
For example, if it’s a fashion blog, a name like “Fashioneriasta” would suit it the best. It is not mandatory though, as it can be a personal blog and you can also give it your name; but that feels old school right now and hook-names are the new cool.
Make sure the title gives at least some hint as to what your blog is about. You can pick just one word related to the niche your blog is about and search the synonyms for that word. Then you can combine two of those words together to come up with something new.
To make things crazier, one of those words can be related to your niche while the other can be totally off-topic. Example- StyleGunner, SportsCook, FishEngine, etc. Okay, I accept I’m not that good at it ????
I know I’m bad at such names, but I have seen this technique work for numerous bloggers, so you must surely take a shot at it in order to choose the perfect name for your blog.In Case of Multi-Niche Blogs…
Things tend to get a bit different and hard in case of multi-niche blogs.
Because single niche blogs are concentrated on just one thing, and it is easier to find names for them. But a blog which speaks about multiple topics needs a universal name, a name which necessarily need not explain the purpose for that blog in itself, but at least it should be catchy and creative.
In my own experience, when I was searching for a name for my multi-topic blog, I tried to come up with unique words (which was a disaster most of the times).
The purpose of my blog was to publish tips, how-to’s, interesting news, opinions, etc. across categories like Fashion, Food, Travel, Tech, Dating, Inspiration, etc.
I thought a lot and after 2 months of rigorous thinking, I surprisingly chose a simple yet catchy name- NOWNHOW.
My explanation behind it was- NOW for the articles which are latest and up-to-date and also bring news, and HOW was simply because more than 50% of the blog posts were how-to and tips articles.
So either choose a name which explains the purpose of your blog, or either go with something totally unique and unheard of (which is very difficult, but not impossible, to come up with).Keep It Short
This is how visitors react to long blog names! I don’t believe in choosing long names for blogs. First of all, something short and tacky is always easy to speak out and is in the trend nowadays. A long name looks unattractive and repels visitors. No one likes long names, whereas short names tend to attract people and leave them curious so that they really want to surf your blog. For me, nownhow.com was better than something like excitingtipsandhowtos.com. Long names like that tend to look ugly, and they are so long that people even don’t want to type it out and probably would like to surf some other blog.
Also, a long name is hard to turn into a logo, and a long logo is an ugly logo. So give your visitors the best. Choose a short name!Shortlist, And Don’t Be Shy to Ask For Opinions
Your blog will be seen by people, real people. So why not let the people decide if they like your options for its name?
It’s simple:All you have got to do is to think, and think a lot. Come up with 20 names or so.Then sit down with a pen and an empty mind. Take a glance at each of those names and pick out the 10 most interesting names, the best 10, from those 20.The next step, ask your family and friends about it. Take their opinion, see how they react to those names. Tell them to rate each of the names on a level of 1 to 10.Consult as many people as you can, but make sure you don’t go online for it. Do not post those names on Twitter or Facebook or any other social media. Because if you do so, and if you are really unlucky, someone will go ahead and buy that domain name and all your efforts will go straight into the recycle bin. It is really hard to come up with good names, so make sure you don’t lose any of them.After you have got people to rate those 10 names, pick out the top 3 (or the top 3 which you think deserve to be the top 3).
So you see, from 20 it went to 10, and from 10 to just 3. The step-by-step process I was talking about, remember?
This does make things a lot less complicated. So you now have the best 3 and it is now up to you to decide which one you would really like to see as your blog name and as its logo.If You Are Not Able to Come Up With Good Names…
Hire a professional.
Yes, and that’s what I did for the name and logo of Blogerish and NOWNHOW. I hired professionals.
Now it can really get hard to find out some good professional creative writers. You cannot trust anyone for such an important job, because if you are not satisfied by the service, it is just a waste of time and money (and patience, of course).
Personally, I recommend you to find professionals from Freelancer.com. All you need to do is to use the simple search filters and find the best professional for your job at your budget.
It gets easier to trust a professional because of the ratings and reviews that they have got for the previous projects. I always turn to Freelancer for all that I can’t do myself and it gets my job done quickly and within my budget.
Is It Available as a Domain Name?
Once you get hold of the best name for your blog, your next and the obvious step would be to check its availability as a domain name.

You can go to any of the domain/hosting providers like Hostgator, Bluehost, etc. and hit the search button to check if that name is available as a dot com.

It is important to choose a dot com over a dot net.Must Read:4 Reasons Why .COM Domain Names Are Better Than Other Extensions
If you have followed all of the above steps honestly, you will rarely be faced by the unavailability of the name that you have chosen.
Unfortunately, if the domain is already taken, you have to pick another name. That’s where that step of ‘shortlisting the names’ comes handy.
When you have got 3 good names at hand, you can go for the others if one is not available. Saves a lot of time and effort, doesn’t it? That’s the power of step-by-step working!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *