How to Pick the Perfect Domain Name

When you’re considering starting your own personal blog or your first website, picking a domain name or a URL can seem scary. But it’s really not! Here’s how to do it.

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I understand, you want to get it right, you want to pick a name that is going to be successful, memorable, and a perfectly good fit for your new “brand.” It’s an important decision!

I wanted to build a blog to partner or work well with my Etsy shop, and it took me several weeks to finally decide upon a name that I absolutely loved.

However, it doesn’t have to take you weeks, or even days! You could easily pick one out today by following these 6 easy steps, that I used when I picked the domain name for my website.

1. What will You Blog About?

The first step is deciding, will it even be a blog? Or will it be a website for your own small business, where you will be selling products? Maybe it’s both? Or, do you want to focus on affiliate marketing or reviews? Or maybe you’re starting your own Etsy shop?

If you are going to primarily use your site for niche affiliate marketing, you’ll want to try to get even more specific about what your niche will be.

You’ll also want to consider who your ideal customer is, and what words they might be searching for on google to find the products or information that they’re looking for.

For example, consider what words you would search for if you wanted to find the info that you’ll be posting about? You can potentially use those keywords in the mix for your own domain name.

If it’s going to be a blog, what are the topics you’ll be posting about? Money? Self-help? Lifestyle? Fashion? You’ll want to come up with a list of around 4-5 key categories, and then subcategories under those.

It’s going to be more important to decide your main topics first, before picking out a domain name that will fit, rather than the other way around.

So, make sure you’ve nailed this down as best as you can before you start!

2. Start Brainstorming Words

Think of as many words as you can think of, all around your niche or topic. You could even use the words you just came up with for the categories and sub-categories above.

For instance, if you’re going blog about “hiking”, you’d brainstorm all the words you can possibly think of that have to do with hiking and the hiking community.

If you’re familiar enough with a topic to want to blog about it, you should be able to come up with a list of 20-50 words to play with.

In the hiking example these could be words like: climbing, day hikes, trail, path, walking, health hiking, fun, weekend hiking, hiking with friends, hiking boots, hiking food, hiking clubs, adventure hiking, travel hiking, free hiking info, backpacking, backpackers, hikers life, top hiking info, best hiking, love hiking, hiking trails, and etc.

3. Search to find even more Words

By now you should have a pretty exhaustive list, with all the related words you could think of. Now, you’ll want to go even further and do a search on Google to help you come up with some more.

Like, you’d do a search on your topic “hiking websites,” and see what other key words that query brings up. Obviously you don’t want to copy someone else’s words or ideas, but seeing what’s out there already could help you think of other potential words too!

Then, you going to take all those words and just start putting them together to see if you can find a combination of any of them that you like, that’s unique, that are a good fit for your topics and purpose.

For instance, from the list above you could consider these: hikingforfun, serioushiker, hikingweekends, lovetohike, bestbootsforhiking, hikingproductreviews, and more. (HikingandMore maybe?)

4. See What’s Available

Next, you’ll go to Google Domains and start typing those in to see what ones might be available. You’ll be able to search and see lots of variations of what you put in as well.

You’ll probably have to try a bunch of the options you came up with, rearrange words, choose alternate words, and etc., to get to one that is available and that you really like.

Just keep playing around until you find a few strong picks that you could actually buy.

Keep in mind that you really do want to try to get a .com site, as they will be much easier to get ranked for in Google and other search engines.

Other extensions are becoming more common like .biz, or .co. But, .com will still be what most people will search for to be able to find your site, so get that if you can.

For instance, my blog name Later-Means-Never.com was actually my second choice. Obviously, I’d have preferred to get that name without having to put the dashes in, but that wasn’t available and I didn’t want to go with anything other than .com.

However, one thing that is pleasantly favorable about having the hyphens is that it’s short, simple, and easier to read than latermeansnever. (Plus, latermeansnever dot com isn’t even being used, it basically leads to a dead end, so it’s not really any competition at this point!)

I will also suggest that you then use a general Google search again too, once you’ve found one name that you like and that is available. You will want to make sure that no one else has a trademark on the words or phrase.

That can cause legal issues for you in the future if you use it after someone else does. And trust me, you don’t want to have to re-brand everything!

5. Narrow Down

Now, it’s time to really sit down and decide for sure, what you want your “brand” to be about long term. Pick out the names, from the remaining options you have and determine which you love the most.

And which, of the those left, is going to resonate the most with all of the content that you think you’ll ever want to consider incorporating into your blog?

That may be a tall order to know right now- so if you don’t know for sure, you will probably want to pick a name that could have a broad meaning.

As an example, my blog Later-Means-Never.com was initially intended to be just about sewing, and to help me market my Etsy Shop- IsaLee Designs.

But, the more I thought about it and worked on the plans of what I wanted my website to eventually be, I realized that I wanted a name that was much more all-encompassing of many other topics that I’d want to talk about.

Things like personal finance, getting out of debt, self-improvement, motivation, sewing & crafting, gift ideas, and be a blogging guide on how to start a new blog.

So, my name or URL needed to be able to fit into all of those categories as an overarching theme word or words. That’s when I settled on the name I did.

Read my article here if you want to know what why I ended up choosing that name!

6. Buy your Domain

You can buy it on its own, usually for around $12 a year from Google domains, or Go-Daddy or one of many other domain sites.

Or, if you just want to get started right away, I recommend getting your hosting set up at the same time, and then you can get your domain for free for a year!

Check out this post that will help you see how to do this in about 15-20 minutes!

Conclusion

Choosing a new blog name or a domain name for your new website won’t be too hard or take forever, if you follow the 6 steps outlined above.

The biggest thing that you’ll need to do is carve out a chunk of time where you can just sit down and really work on it.

Feel free to ask friends and family members for feedback, and see what they think about your options.

Better yet, ask some potential customers, if you have contact with any people that will possibly be your followers or readers. Because ultimately those are the ones that will care the most, as you’ll always be writing for them.

Just remember, when picking your domain name, have fun, be creative, think out of the box, use research to guide you, and don’t let fear hold you back from just doing it!

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