Picking A Domain Name For My Blog?

Posted in Anatomy of a Blog, Domain Names, Starting Out by DB

 When I first started mulling about the idea of writing a blog that talks about all the aspects of managing a website, I had two choices. 

  • Either use one of my existing domain names from my portfolio or
  • Register a brand new domain name.

This was an easy decision to make. Why? Well, I had myTradeDomain.com with me for some time, a bit more than 5 years. I had not done too much with it, I used it previously as a reseller and that was pretty much it. It seemed to fit the blog topic well enough, but more importantly it had 5 years already on it and it was a keyword domain to boot.

There is a certain belief among webmasters that an aged domain scores over a new domain especially if you are looking at attracting organic visitors to your website. The theory is that Google places filters on new domains to stop the website from ranking high on competitive keywords. Remember this can also happen if you have frequent nameserver or ownership changes. The so called “Sandbox effect” has been debated quite extensively on a lot of forums with no definite conclusions. This ofcourse becomes a moot point if you don’t have an aged domain to choose from if and when you plan to start a blog or website. 

All the same, christening a domain has become a mind numbing/draining exercise. Be prepared to spend a lot of time trying to find the right domain name for your site.  Christening your baby is like a walk in the park when compared to naming your website. One site that I recommend to help you find available domain names quickly is SwiftDomainSearch.com (psssst I built it). You can see the results of your domain name searches across 12 popular tld’s as you type. Pretty cool huh !!

I’m digressing now, back to myTradeDomain. Once I decided on the name, I made sure I registered the .net and the .org extensions. Make sure you do this, at the very least get the .net extension. It’s only going to cost you about 10 bucks but will protect your brand and save you a lot of heartache seeing the .net version ranked higher than yours if both websites end up in the same space.

If you are looking to register a domain, do read my previous tips on domain registration.

Table of contents for "Anatomy Of A Blog" Series.

  1. Anatomy Of A Blog - Why?
  2. Picking A Domain Name For My Blog?
  3. What You Really Should Be Looking For In A WordPress Theme
  4. Must Have Plugins For Your Wordpress Blog
  5. Secure Your WordPress Blog. 10 Steps For A Complete Blog Lockdown.
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