Ideas for a blog name – Proven tips for inventing a good name for a blog
Ok, so you decided that you are starting a blog. Great! But now comes the tricky part, you need to come up with a name. Or at least with some ideas for a blog name. It’s an important step so you shouldn’t underestimate it. It will play a key role in your branding and marketing. This will be a name that you will be associated with for at least a few next years (or for the rest of your life if you are lucky!).
It’s not that easy to come up with a good blog name especially that there’s countless of blogs online already. This is why in this article we will give you some guidelines on how you can approach this process.
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Thinking about a good name for blog
While you are trying to find a catchy name for your blog you need to think about its main assets. Do you want it to be easy to memorize and unique?
Or do you rather prefer something that may serve your SEO purposes and answer the queries people enter into a search engine?
Answering this question will help you to decide whether you’d like to go with keyword-based names or brand-based names. Let’s take a while and dive deeper into those strategies:
Can you find ideas for blog name by using keyword-based names?
Keywords are significant words (or just a word) used to find information when researching. Simply speaking people enter a phrase to the search engine to find a solution to their problem.
So, for example, let’s assume that you are a dance instructor. It’s obvious that you teach people how to dance. Your potential clients may be looking for ‘dance lessons’ or ‘learn how to dance’ in the browser’s address bar. But when you check availability for domains like learntodance.com or dancelessons.com you will see that these domains are already taken. This means that you need to reach for more niche-focused keywords to find a suitable name…
…or do you? Keyword-driven website names seem similar to each other. Can you see the difference between learntodance.com, learn2dance.com and learntodance.net?
Do you think it’s easy for a user that is not familiar with either of these blogs? Do you think you can be easily recognised? Additionally despite the fact that picking a good name for a blog that is also keyword-focused may seem like a really tough challenge, it may also be not something you really want from a pragmatical point of view. Why?
Because of Google of course. Domain names that were matching the keywords used to be higher in the rankings, but it’s not the case anymore. As John Mueller (Trends Analyst at Google) says: “…just because keywords are in a domain name doesn’t mean that it’ll automatically rank for those keywords. And that’s something that’s been the case for a really, really long time”.
A great alternative for this approach is brandable names.
Can brand-based ideas be a good name for a blog?
Definitely! If you plan to be serious about your blogging and do it long-term (and one day maybe even full-time?), if you are an expert in a certain area or you simply plan to write about your life… it’s probably the direction you should be facing.
The downside of this approach is that it takes time to get recognized and build a huge followers base. And even if you do no one can guarantee you a success. However, it’s definitely worth giving a shot. There are countless success stories, but just to name a few to start with it would be: hollydolke.com or gillianperkins.com. Yet your brand doesn’t necessarily have to be your first and last name, it can be a random word or totally made-up word.
How about mixing it up?
Mixes of a keyword and brand name are becoming more and more popular approach these days. It may include your name and what you do at the same time. It makes it easier to target by a keyword but at the same time, it makes your brand recognizable. Just think about names like Yoga with Adriene (yogawithadriene.com) or Dance with miss Rachel (dancewithmissrachel.com) etc.
We know that it’s highly likely that even with the above tips in mind you are still struggling with your list ideas. The good news is that you are not the only one. That’s why smart people invited Blog Name Generators.
Blog Name Generators – is this how you find catchy names for blogs?
Well, they definitely may help in the process. A blog name generator is an app that can help you generate unique names. In general, they provide you with dew ideas based on our preferred keywords, they may also check the availability of the domain.
Let’s take a look at the most popular options:
Lean Domain Search (https://leandomainsearch.com/)
We love ultra-fast websites and apps. That’s why we put this tool first on the list. Lean Domain Search was brought to live by Automattic, a company that stands behind WordPress.
It’s 100% free to use and super fast new search engine for finding available domain names. Domain ideas are brought by pairing your keyword with other phrases that are used in popular domain names.
Wordoid (https://wordoid.com/)
Wordoid is a neat app that we really liked. Wordoids are made-up words. Words that are unique and sound natural.
Wordoid will generate quality names not only for your blog but also for your domain or even company. It’s super simple to use, just use the filters on the left-hand side (pick a language, quality level, pattern behaviour and maximum characters). Once you are done with that you can surf through multiple ideas that were generated for you.
Wordoid is completely free to use. If you want to keep your history or bookmark favourite suggestions you need to login through Google or Facebook account.
Panabee (https://www.panabee.com/)
Panabee is a really nice tool that will definitely help with doing your research. It gives you a quick option to search for domain names, app names, website names, and business names.
It can be a huge rescue if you are struggling with coming up with a blog name. It’s super simple – you need to put at least two words in a search field and hit enter. It will generate some ideas for you, related terms and even check the basic social media handles.
Name mesh (https://namemesh.com)
Name mesh is a very cool domain name hunting tool that provides you with many real types of options. It’s a really useful tool that generates lots of ideas for a blog name, especially when you have several keywords in mind but you don’t know how you can join them into one lovely sounding name. With Name mesh you can be really creative as it generates names in a few different categories:
- most common domain names including ‘com’, ‘net’ and ‘org’
- new: new domains that have entered general availability
- short: Create short domain names by overlapping the keywords with the TLDs, like del.icio.us, foc.us, citi.es etc
- fun: Use various techniques to change existing keywords to generate new words that are very brandable
- mix: Generate domains by mixing in other words and popular suffixes like ‘ly’, ‘ify’ etc.
Domainr (https://domainr.com)
Not really a name generator but rather domain availability checker. We place it here because it’s an ICANN-accredited entity, which means no false positives for your results.
Domainr provides a context-aware suggestion, surfaces relevant top-level domains and helps find the perfect name—especially if the .com is taken. What’s really important domainr checks your domain availability in real-time as you type. You can really quickly avoid failed searches or taken domains.
5 tips that will help to polish your idea for blog name
Ok, so you did your brainstorming and you have at least a few ideas that you like, but you are still not sure which one to choose. Here are 5 things to consider when determining a successful brand name:
Avoid hard-to-spell names (Keep it simple.)
Make sure to say it aloud plenty of times. Imagine that people need to say the name a youtube video or in 1 to 1 conversation or they try to refer your blog to a friend. You don’t want potential followers getting confused when they speak about your brand, do you?
Future-proof it (Don’t pick a name that can limit you in any way)
Focusing on a niche is good, but focusing on a niche too much may be an obstacle in scaling your business as it grows. Always leave the door for extending your topic.
Make sure it’s available
Even best name won’t help you if you can’t take it online. If the .com domain is taken chances are that you will need to look for alternatives. You can use a Namecheap Domain Name Search service [https://www.namecheap.com/domains/domain-name-search/] that will immediately give you plenty of options at reasonable prices. Once you have a name there’s next step ahead of you – picking the right social handle that is consistent across all platforms (you can give Namechk (https://namechk.com/) a try)
Get feedback
Come up with 5, 10 or 15 ideas and then run them through your partner, family, friends or anyone from the target audience. Listen to their feedback carefully and see if there are any things common for the reviews.
Make sure that that you are
happy with the name.love it!Simple as that but many people forget about this. No matter how good ideas for a blog name are if you don’t believe in them or you are not convinced – let it go. You will stick to this name for a long time so it needs to make you happy and proud.
Conclusions
We know that coming up with a list of ideas for blog name is not that simple, but it’s a really important step. It will play a really big role in your online identity. We know how important is to take your time and think about every single pros and con.
Don’t rush, take your time, nail the process and we keep our fingers crossed so you can come up with a name that is amazing, unforgettable and you are proud of.
Pssst. Want to Register Your Blog Name for Free?
Now when you have your domain name you should register it as soon as possible. Just imagine that someone registers it right before you do. Pretty frustrating right?
Fortunately, we have really good news for you. Blue Host (a hosting that is officially recommended by WordPress) gives you a domain for free when you buy a WordPress dedicated hosting. They also offer free SSL certificate and 1 click WordPress install. And a lovely discount on their plans. It’s a really great offer so make sure you check it out.
Features image and article images come from: freepik.com