How to pick a name for your new blog

As blogging continues to grow, more and more people are joining in the fun and talking about setting up a blog. Deciding that you want to blog is the easy part, choosing where to begin is when things get tricky.

I’ve seen hundreds of questions lately related t getting started as a blogger. So what better way to start this new website than to dive in and discuss how to pick a name and create your new blog.

Coming up with a name seems like an easy decision, but when you try choosing one. Bang! A brick wall. It’s difficult coming up with something that will stick with you for a long time.

You can of course change it, but if you want to grow your blog and become well known, it should be consistent. I had major issues with choosing a new name for this blog, everything I came up with was taken, here’s some tips and tools I found along the way.

3 steps to picking a blog name

1. Pick a topic

Grab some paper and write down your interests. What do you like? What are your favourite hobbies? What topics or theme would you like your blog to have? What words would you like others to describe your blog as?

2. Brainstorm

Jot down words describing you and words associated with your theme, scribble down absolutely everything that comes into your head. Then use a thesaurus and write down more words and related words. You’ll begin to accumulate a bank of words that you can then go through.

It could contain the topic such as “BellesBeautyBlog“. Using keywords will be good for SEO and will let people know what your blog is about but it’s not necessary, you could go for more of a “brand” name instead.

3. Sort

What goes together? What sounds good? Ask others to say your blog name, it’s important that if you tell someone your blog name that they can pronounce it.

If you feel like all the good ones taken, try mixing up words for combined topics, create your own words, change the language, drop the last vowel or add a word like “get…”, “a…” or “the…”.

Top tips for choosing a blog name and domain

• Keep it simple, short and to the point.
• Blog name should equal blog URL to avoid confussion
• It should be easy to pronounce and spell – better for word of mouth.
• Ask someone outside of the topic you’re writing about
• Overly stuffing your domain name makes it look spammy to both Google and readers. Stick to your main keyword or topic.

Idea generation tools for blog name and domain

• Namrr.com – This is really handy, you can check if the name is available across multiple platforms such as Twitter and Facebook and it will generate suggestions related to the keywords you used.
• Knowem is brilliant, it lets you check usernames over multiple platforms and social media sites so that you can see what’s free. It’s important to have the same username throughout your sites as it makes it easier for people to find you.
• Use instantdomainsearch.com & nameboy.com to check availability.
• Bustaname.com – you can enter several keywords and automatically combines them.
• Impossibility lets you enter your main keyword and then adds a verb, noun or adjective to the beginning or end and generates a list for you.
• Leandomainsearch lets you enter keywords and gives you a huge list of domains

I hope this post helps you when choosing the name for your new blog. My advice is to give it a couple of days, keep an eye and ear out to see if anything sparks a new idea before settling on the one.