9 tips to Find an Awesome Name for your New Blog

Discover how to find an Awesome Name for your New Blog.

If you are reading this, you might be brainstorming an awesome name for your new blog right now.

You are starting a new blog - and that is fantastic. One of the first things you'll need is to find an awesome name for your new blog. Starting a new blog is super exciting and can be quite intimidating, too. Discover what goes into creating an awesome name for your new blog.

• Do you have a very specific idea about what you want to blog about?
• Are you an expert in your field who is trying to connect with other like-minded people?
• Or are you planning to start a blog to share information about your business, products, your passion, brand, or services?

Whatever your motivation, you'll want to start out with an awesome name for your new blog.

Let’s look at some common questions you might have:

• Does it really matter how you name your blog?
• Have all the good blog names been taken? Are you too late? (Answer: NO not at all)
• Do you need help coming up with good ideas for blog names?
• Are there any rules you should follow?
• How do you go about naming a blog? Is .com better than .co or .food?

All great questions. I am going to give you the tools you need to brainstorm ideas for an awesome name for your new blog or business! After you’re done with this post you will know what to do and what not do.

Having a good name can help you get your blog off to a great start. A poorly chosen name can create problems and might make it more difficult for people to find you. You'll hear me and many other experienced bloggers say this again and again. You'll want to make it as easy as possible for your readers to find you.

We’ll look at best practices to spark ideas for blog names. We’ll also talk about what not to do when development with ideas to name your blog.

And you can always download the free Find Your Awesome Blog Name Worksheet that will help you find a great name for your new blog! 

The (totally non-scary) tech stuff - YOU CAN DO THIS.

You're starting to brainstorm an awesome name for your new blog, so let's go over some tech stuff you'll need to know. 

A blog name consists of two components:

• the name you choose for your blog/website and
• the top-level domains (.com, .co, .net, .co.uk etc…) - I also refer to them as domain extensions

Simple enough right?

For naming your domain the following rules apply:

• You can use Letters
• You can use Numbers (not recommended)
• You can use Hyphens (not recommended
• Your domain name can’t have more than 63 characters (not allowed)
• Your domain name can’t start or end  with a hyphen (sorry not allowed either)
• Your domain name can’t have any spaces between words (don’t shoot the messenger … not allowed)

We’ll cover this topic in greater detail. But in case you’re confused about the terms ‘domain’, ‘hosting’, and WordPress think about your blog as a home.

Hosting is the street you live on, a domain is a house you live in, and WordPress is what you use to decorate your home. You will have to purchase both hosting and a domain, but the WordPress installation is free.

A simple way to check if your domain name is valid and available is by using the Bluehost site. You can also purchase your domain name as well as a great and inexpensive hosting plan from Bluehost.

In my Awesome Blog Name Worksheet, I’ll give several other resources that will help you look for domain inspiration and availability.

Think long-term

This is my number one tip to find an awesome name for your new blog. Think long-term and don’t rush it. Your blog is going to be around for a long time. Ask yourself if your domain name reflects your current vision as well as where you see yourself in the future. Let’s say you want to start a greeting card business. One of the first options would be to buy a domain name that includes the words “greeting card” or you brainstorm a name/phrase that includes the word “stationary.” There is no one right answer or one perfect solution that fits everybody. This is really about you and what you want your blog to be. It’s the fun part.

Niche + Longevity

Start to visualize what you want your blog to look like. This goes right to why you want to blog in the first place.

If you’ve done some research into blogging, you might have heard that it’s a good idea to ‘niche’ down from the start. The idea is that because there are a LOT of competing websites you’ll have an easier time finding readers if you zero in on a specific niche or interest.

For instance, if you know you want to blog about personal finance, fashion, or urban chicken farming you might want to consider a name that tells your reader straight away what your blog is all about.

Incorporating Inspiration

You take inspiration from popular blogs like PinchofYum.com (food blog) or Thrifty Little Mom (budget-conscious parenting blog).

These bloggers give their readers (and by extension search engines) first clues what their site is all about before a visitor even clicks on the site. This might be an especially great idea if you have a very clear vision of what you want your blog to be about.

As a multi-passionate blogger, I found this to be one of the biggest challenges when I came up with my blog name. Although I had a very clear vision of what this blog is all about I found it hard to niche down in the beginning and chose a name that reflected that.

Brainstorm with Mind Maps

 

Following up on the idea of niching down.

• Is there a central theme you have in mind for your blog?
• What are words that relate to that topic?
• Are you going to blog about multiple topics?

Whatever the answer, start by making a list of words that you associate with your blog.

This is a great opportunity to play around with Mind Maps.

For this tip, all you need is a piece of paper. Write down one topic you want to blog about and begin making associations with that topic.

All you need is a pen and paper. You can download my Awesome Blog Name Worksheet for free mind mapping and organizing resources here.

Name Generation Tools

If you are stuck in the brainstorming phase of finding an awesome name for your new blog and feel like you just can’t come up with a fabulous name consider using an online name generation tool. Domain Name generators can even kickstart brand new ideas.

One of my favorite blog name generators is namemesh.com. And Namemesh organizes suggestions into a variety of categories such as new, common, similar, short, fun, etc. In my Awesome Blog Name Worksheet, I’ve included more of my top domain name generators.

First Choice: .com

The gold standard for top-level domains is still .com. Right now 46.6% of all top-level domains are .com.

You’ll have to decide if it is worth spending extra time on branding and differentiating yourself from somebody who has the same domain name but a .com extension.

And although more domain extensions such as .co, .net, .org, are available readers will be most familiar with the .com extension. There are some exceptions to the rule. If your blog is big in Germany and you have a German-speaking audience you'll most likely want to get a .de extension, similarly in the UK .co.uk is very popular. However, at the end of the day .com is still your best choice. Most content providers (bloggers) are going to secure their .com website.

If you find that somebody else already the same awesome name you had in mind, you have a few choices.

• Go back to the creative drawing board and look for another awesome name for your new blog.
• Consider alternative extensions such as .co, .net, or .org. 
• Next you'll see that there are a lot of new extensions such as .sport, .company, .fitness, .food. The jury is still out on how these new extensions will perform in the future. For now, they're still novelty domains and to be treated with caution.

If you choose to embrace one of the novelty extensions you’ll have to spend more time and money on branding and marketing your site. 

The choice is yours but at this point, I think that spending the time to get a good .com address is still worth it.

Keep it simple

Keep your blog name simple. This might turn out to be more challenging than it sounds. Again the idea is to make it as easy as possible for your readers to find you. One way of doing this is to put yourself in the shoes of your potential reader.

Think about the things you want them to walk away with after they read your blog. Try looking at your blog from a friendly stranger's perspective. Imagine what message you want this friendly stranger to walk away with. 

Try to keep the spelling of your blog name simple. Short domain names are great, but I’ve come to believe they aren’t essential. My favorite blogger is Jennifer Ross from prettyneatliving.com. I love this blog name because it’s easy to remember and it sounds nice when you speak it out loud.

Say it Loud - Say it Proud

This is an another "simple rule.” Is your awesome name for your new blog easy to pronounce? Do you have to spell it for people, when you to tell them about your awesome name for your new blog? If you talk to others, do you need to explain what you meant? (More on that in the ‘what not to do’ section of this post) If you do, I’d recommend going back to the drawing board. Competition for readers is fierce and we as bloggers have to make it as simple as possible for our readers to find our blog. Simple doesn’t mean that your blog name has to be super short it just has to be easily understood by the majority of the people you’re hoping to attract to your blog.

Get feedback!

Come up with a few ideas and ask your family and friends how they feel about your awesome name for your new blog. I am blessed because my BFF is a fellow blogger (an amazing Pinterest VA).

She’s always on board to toss ideas around with me. But even if you don’t have ‘industry friends’ I’d recommend getting feedback from somebody you respect. 

If you aren’t ready to share your blogging venture with your loved ones you can try to crowdsource some opinions and ideas for the awesome name for your new blog. 

PRO TIP - Join a facebook group for bloggers and ask the group for input. Some Facebook groups are incredibly helpful.

Validation

Ask others. Ask your spouse, a family member, friends, or acquaintances. Ideally, you’ll present your idea to somebody who might even fit into your group of ideal readers.  

If you are open about your blog plans and have a bit of a social media following you could also poll them on your idea. Maybe you have two or three ideas that you like. You could create a Facebook poll and ask for feedback.

Sleep on your awesome blog name for your new blog idea!

Yes, I mean this literally. Once you have a name you think might work, sleep on it. Does it still sound as good in the morning as it did the night before? Do you still feel as excited about the idea as you felt the night before?  Now, I’ll be the first one to admit that I’m no good at implementing that rule myself. Blog names are relatively inexpensive, so in the past, I have secured a blog name I liked ‘just in case’. But I’ll also be the first to admit that this isn’t the best way to go about this.

Consider Your Competition

For instance, if your blog sounds too similar to somebody else’s you might lose readers because that blog has been around longer and has already established a loyal following. And no matter what your motivation is for starting a blog the one thing you’ll definitely want is READERS. 

Consider Social Media Handles when you look for your awesome name for your new blog

This is again based on the idea to make it as simple as possible for your readers to find you and to remember your blog.

If your blog name is bestblog.com you want to check if that name is available for social media handles. Pro Tip: Use the same handle across all social media platforms.

Download my comprehensive Best Blog Name Checklist here and gain complimentary access to my VIP newsletter.

Character Limits (2018)

Facebook: 50 characters

Instagram: 30 characters (letters, numbers, and underscores allowed)

Pinterest: 20 characters

Twitter Username: 15 characters (letters, numbers, and underscores allowed)

YouTube: 70 characters

Let’s talk about what you should avoid in your quest for an awesome name for your new blog.

Find an Awesome Name for Your New Blog - Avoid Hyphens and Numbers

You might find that your dream name has already been taken by somebody else. You might then brainstorm and think that you could substitute a portion of a name with a number like ‘cr8tive’ instead of ‘creative’ or ‘4goodluck’ instead of ‘forgoodluck'.

At first, it seems like a pretty creative solution. But this creates an obstacle for your readers (and search engines).

Now readers have to remember that you are the blogger that writes about the topic that they are super interested in but that you use a number somewhere in your domain name. Trust me in this, readers want to go down the path of least resistance.

Numbers are an obstacle and your job is to remove as many obstacles for your readers as possible.

Dealing with Hyphens

Hyphens are another potential roadblock and a source of potential confusion. You want to make it as easy as possible for your (future) readers to find you and remember you and your blog name.

Tip: Search engines don’t like hyphens and numbers either.  And you will make it more difficult for your blog and content to rank well. 

There always exceptions to these ‘rules’. I’m trying to share best practices to make it easier for you to attract new readers.  

Find an Awesome Name for Your New Blog - Avoid ‘The’

This is not a hard and fast rule, but I speak from experience. A company I worked for had a URL that started with ‘the’. The URL was  ‘thecomany.com’.

Our email addresses were ‘[email protected]’. 

Every time I would talk to somebody on the phone and share the email address I had to spell out my name at THE (T H E) at company dot com. 

And because everybody is busy and typos happen we had to waste time following up because of emails we never received. Often the person had forgotten about ‘the’ in the email address and the email never arrived. 

Now that company was a brick and mortar store of local repute with an existing base of loyal customers. So the people we did business with had an incentive to get the correct email address. 

Advice for New Bloggers

If you are a new blogger or business just starting out, people are less like to spend much time and effort guessing your name or even double-checking.

Often you’ll get one shot.

If people don’t remember your name, they’ll go somewhere else where they’ll find a similar service more easily accessible.

Find an Awesome Name for Your New Blog - Cutesy Names

You've probably noticed that I misspelled ‘cutesy’. Maybe you feel ‘custeyblog.com’ is an awesome name for your new blog. And then bummer,  you find that the name has already been taken.

Back to the drawing board.  Let's say you have a craft/DIY blog and think that cutesy and cutesy might be a nice play on words and you'd still get close enough to your domain name. You check for availability and bing cutsyblog.com is still available. 

But should you buy it? It depends, in my fictitious example maybe you could reason it out (this is an example and as of July 2018 both cutesyblog.com and cutsyblog.com were both still available) that it makes sense.  But if it sounds too contrived it's probably not worth it.

Good Readability

You want to make it as easy as possible for your readers to find your new blog. Because readers will have to remember that you are the blogger who purposely misspells her blog name - and chances are they won't. (As of mid-2018 both blog names were still available.) 

But you see how easy it would be confusing if I used the word cutsycreative.com instead of custeycreative.com.

Summary: What To Avoid When you are looking for an Awesome Name for Your New Blog

• Hyphens and Numbers in your name
• starting your blog name with ‘The’
• Cutesy Names
• anything that makes it more difficult for your reader to find and connect with you.

Hopefully, you’ll have gotten a good idea of how you can find an awesome name for your new blog. I’ve also created a worksheet that will help you get started and give you some great resources.

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