On Naming Your Blog and or Website

The name of your website and /or blog is important, in terms of both branding you as a professional and helping your site be found.

When you start your blog you will have to create a name that will read, "yourname.blogspot" if you are on Blogger or "yourname.wordpress" if you are on Word Press, where "yourname" is the name you choose. The .blogspot or .wordpress suffix makes your site name look unprofessional (at least by comparison to your competition) and makes your name needlessly long. Everyone is used to looking for website with a .com suffix. You will lose traffic when searchers look for your site, type in the .com address, get frustrated and move on to their next task. Attention spans are limited. Make sure you make yourself easily findable.

You should purchase a web site domain name, such as "yourname.com" and set up an automatic forward so that any time someone types "yourname.com" they are automatically forwarded to your blog. You then use the web site name in all of your promotional activity.

Web site domain names are easily purchased with prices ranging from $5 to $15. Automatic forwarding should be done for free by the company you purchase the domain name from. If it is not, move on to another company. There are hundreds. I purchase all my domain names and set up forwarding from www.GoDaddy.com. If you prefer, this is a task I can do for you.

Ideally, The "yourname" section of your blog address will match that of your web address. For example, if you want your blog name to be XYZCompany.blogspot.com then your web address should be www.XYZCompany.com. You may need to search around for different names depending on their availability.

Your site name should fit three criteria:

1. It should be short,
2. It should not contain hyphens, and
3. Description is more important than cuteness.

Short names and names without hyphens make your site name easier to remember. A description of what your site is about in three words or less will attract more readers. Further, the descriptive words should be keywords for your site. This will help with your Search Engine Optimization and lead to more traffic (SEO is a huge topic that we will get to later.).

Your web site name will have the option of coming with a number of different suffixes. You should choose a .com, .net or .org. These are the three most used in the USA and, reportedly, these three get higher rankings in Google searches (although Google denies this). I only use .com. and suggest that you do as well.

Finally, while you are about buying domain names, you should buy the domain name with your name as well. If you are, say, Susan Martison, you should buy the domain name, www.susanmartinson.com. If that name is taken, you may wish to consider www.suemartinson.com or www.smartinson.com or some other variant thereof. Purchasing your name as a domain name will open many options for you as you build your business.