Contents
Prep Before You Get Into the Steps
Fair warning: This step isn’t going to be quick or easy, it will take lots of thoughtful consideration, research, brainstorming, and most importantly dedication to get a domain name that works.
But don’t fret!
We’ve put together a list of fundamentals riddled with the best tips and advice in the biz. It’s all you’ll need to make the best decision going forward with your domain name.
At this point, you should have already decided on a niche for your blog. If you haven’t done so, we highly recommend that you do this first. It will be helpful in choosing a domain name. For more information about what a niche is and how to pick the best one suited for your blogging needs check out our article on “How To Choose Your Niche”.
When you ultimately decide to get a domain name, it marks one of the final steps you’ll have to take when starting your blog and getting it off the ground. Your domain name is what your audience will recognize most about you and it can make or break the outcome of your site.
Before you dive into this article, it’s important that you acknowledge the reality that you may not get the domain name you want.
Don’t get discouraged if your desired website name is already taken or unavailable!
There are a ton of other domain name variations out there that could work out and end up being better for you in the long run.
Now, let's look at the best methods on how to get a domain name successfully for you and your blog.
Step 1: Figure Out Your Domain Name Brand-Ability
Okay you guys, it’s time for you to get creative with choosing a domain name for your blog! It’s also time to do some serious work on your brand.
When you get a domain name, what you are essentially doing is determining your brand and how your audience will perceive it. You are showing your readers who you are and what you’re about just in the website name itself. Your domain name is what people will notice first about your blog since this is the face of your site.
If your audience likes what you’re about and is intrigued by your brand this will promote traffic and loyal visitors. This is why it’s incredibly important that you consider your brand and what you foresee for your blog when trying to choose a good website name.
Look Into Better Branding Practices
For better branding practices you may want to consider making your domain name recognizable across the globe. You don’t want to exclude the outside world from your blog because your domain name is too local to your surroundings or the trends of today. For ways to brand better, here are some things you should not do when selecting a domain name.
What to avoid at all costs:
- Hyphens
- Numbers, especially as a replacement for letters (wh0 wants 2 r3ad tha4?)
- Confusing spelling
- Awkward pronunciation
Now that we have that covered, let’s move onto the things you should do to make your domain name brand-able.
Ways to Make Your Name Brand-able
There are 6 key factors that will make your domain name brand-able.
1. Memorability: Will your audience remember you after their first visit? Make your domain easy to recollect.
2. Uniqueness: Separate yourself from others with a unique domain name that gives the audience a glimpse of what your blog is about.
3. User-Friendly: Don’t make your readers have to guess and piece things together, make it simple for them to know what they’re reading.
Some things to ask yourself are: Can you pronounce it easily? How easy is it to type? Is it aurally confusing? Is the spelling obvious?
Try to stay away from abbreviations, hyphens, numbers, and colloquialism.
4. Relevance: Since your domain name coincides with your brand, it should tie into your blog's purpose, products and/or services and overall vision.
You might be thinking: “There are tons of blogs out there with names that don’t relate to what the blog is actually about”.
This is true and we are not saying you can’t do this, but as a new blogger it may be easier to get someone to read your blog if they have an idea of what it’s about.
5.Credibility: Keeping it professional is always a good idea. This doesn’t mean you can’t be creative or unique, in fact, you should aspire to have your domain name incorporate these traits. You want your audience to trust you without a doubt.
6. Simplicity: Keep it short, simple, and with minimal syllables. This helps people remember you and keeps you user-friendly.
TreeHugger, LifeHacker and TechCrunch are all really great examples of well branded domain names. Think about these names, check out their blog to see what it’s about and then go through the list above, you will soon see that they tick off all the boxes.
Use Keywords
Sure, it’s good to have some keywords in your domain name but don’t force it. Try to incorporate them into your name and brand organically and avoid using exact-match domains. This is when a domain name is made solely of the keywords for your niche and brand.
For example: Cheapmarketingstrategies.com has 3 keywords: cheap, marketing, strategies. Spamming keywords was effective for SEO purposes at first but search engines like Google quickly caught onto this gimmick and as a result, it isn’t as much of a ranking factor these days.
Get a .Com
There are currently more than 100 million .COM domains registered. It’s no surprise that as one of the oldest, most used TLD, .COM domains are by far the most reliable extension on the market.
Now, we aren’t saying that you can’t go with a .NET or .ORG, or even something like a .PIZZA ( If you were a pizza parlor). You can make those work to your advantage for you're brand, but it’s a little harder to gain people's trust as a new blogger.
People love the .COM. Here’s why:
Ever-Lasting: At the inception of the internet, .COM domains have dominated as a TLD and it’s no surprise that to this day they are still the most popular. You can never go wrong with a .COM.
Accessibility: The .COM domain will be recognized and accessible to almost anybody all around the world. While there are advantages to obtaining specific domains to your location, a .COM will be without a doubt congenial to your audience.
Familiarity: As the first TLD it’s grown in popularity and is recognized all around the world as the TLD you need to be recognized online.
Success Factor: So many people register .COMs over other extensions because they’re associated in the same groups as some of the most popular websites online today.
Domain name examples include apple.com, twitter.com, google.com… you get the idea. Because they’re so credible, when you register a .COM, you’ll acquire some of that respect.
Bonus Branding Tip
Be proactive when it comes to your domain and branding, you want to protect yourself. A way you can do that is to purchase various extensions of the domain name you’ve registered, as well as misspellings of the domain.
Why?….
Well, this will deter your competitors or malicious groups from registering other versions of your domain name. It also means that your audience will be sure to visit your site in case they type in the wrong domain name.
Step 2: Get Smart! Get to Brainstorming and Research!
Set aside some time for yourself to be comfy on the couch with a pen, notebook and your favorite hot bevy. Settle in, get serious about brainstorming and doing research for the right domain name.
It could take you minutes, hours, or even days before you’re finally happy with what you’ve come up with. To keep this step as painless as possible, here are some tips and tools that will help you along the way.
Brainstorming
Take a look at keywords that are relevant to your blog and what you want your brand to be about. There are primary and secondary keywords that you can examine more closely for your domain name.
Primary Keywords: Consist of the basic topics you’ll be covering and what your blog is about. Think of your niche in this sense as well.
Secondary Keywords: Are more specific to the field you’re discussing.
For example: If you're blogging about traveling across the Great Lakes by kayak then you would want to brainstorm the primary ideas around kayak, lakes, paddling, etc.. And your secondary words would be adventure, travel, journey, challenge etc…
Unfortunately, all dictionary words are already registered. So to save you some time when trying to get a domain name, skip searching for things like kayak.com because it’s probably not going to happen for you. Try to incorporate more than one keyword in your domain name such as kayakadventure.com.
OR
What you could do is add to your domain name idea by using prefixes and suffixes to make it more likely for them to be available to you.
A prefix goes before your primary keyword: prokayak.com.
A suffix goes after your primary keyword: kayakpro.com.
The only problem with this method is that it could lengthen your domain name just a little too much. This then makes it less appealing to your audience. Make sure your prefix or suffix isn’t too long.
Research
After brainstorming for hours on end like a mad scientist, you’ve come up with a long list of possibilities (hopefully). Now is the time to check these possibilities online to see if these names are registered or available for public registration.
The best way to search for a domain’s record of registration is to check WHOIS information. This will tell you if it’s available or not, when it was registered, when the expiry date is, which registrar it’s registered through and who owns it among other things.
To find this information on your perspective domain name, check out the following WHOIS search engines. Keep in mind, a lot of registrars and all registries have their own WHOIS search capability.
Whois.com: Allows you to get all the information you need about the domain, but doesn’t give other options for TLDs when the name isn’t available.
Whois.net: Doesn’t give as many details about the domain and it unfortunately leaves out contact info. However, it does give you a list and cost of other TLDs that would work for that name. Plus it has a filters option, which allows you to narrow down the TLD options.
Who.is: This site is the one we would recommend using. It gives you all the information you require and an excellent list of alternative TLDs and their price.
Alright, it now time to type in your desired domain names into one of the search engines and see what you can find out about it.
If you are able to find one that works for you, that’s great! Move onto the “Check Out Your Domain” section. If you are having a hard time finding a domain name that is available continue reading!
What to Do If Your Domain is Taken
Oh No! Your Domain is Taken!
So, your domain is registered. It wouldn’t hurt to send off a quick email or phone call to the registrant/owner of the domain to see if they are planning to sell it.
To find their contact information, check the registrant/owner name shown in the WHOIS description. If it’s not available on WHOIS, you can also head to their website and use the contact info found there to get in touch with them.
But be careful here!
If you do send them a purchase inquiry or even just a request for information regarding the domain’s availability, the domain name will likely not be priced at the standard registration or even renewal fee.
When there is a demand for a domain name the price jumps up to a premium. We think that in cases like this, it may be a good idea to just let it go and keep trying other domain names until you find one that you like and is a reasonable price.
Remember: You are new to blogging, you don’t want to waste thousands of dollars to get a domain name. There are other areas that you could invest that money into.
Check Out Your Domain's Competition Before Purchasing
Damn your domain looks good!
Or does it?
Let's say you’ve found your domain name for your blog, hurray! Don’t purchase that name just yet, there is still a little research to do.
Now is a good time to check your domain out online to see that there are other competitors with a similar name.You want to get a good idea of what’s out there and how it relates to your brand. You want the similar names to have a positive vibe around them. If they don’t, it could affect you negatively in the future.
Head to google and type in your domain name into the search engine to see similar domain names, like we did here with kayakadventure.com:
You can now see that there are plenty of sites with similar domain names. Check these sites out and make sure they are what you want your blog to be associated with.
Do a Background Check on Your Domain
To see if or when your domain name was being used in the past, check out WayBack Machine. It’s helpful for you to know if your domain name was used a long time ago, since older names are considered trustworthy by search engines. As long as they weren’t banned or used for anything illegal.
An exceptionally important tool to use is one of the Google Banned Checker tools. It’s pretty self-explanatory, it’ll tell you if the domain you’re looking at is currently banned by Google. Let us just tell you now, you do not want to get a domain name if it’s banned. Simple as that!
We went to SEOMastering.com to find out if “kayakadventure.com” is banned. You simply have to type the name into the search engine and then it will say whether it’s banned or not.
Step 3: Get a Domain Name. It’s Time to Register!
Put your desired domain names into the WHOIS search engines now! It's time to get a domain name.
The WHOIS will say something along the lines of “available for registration”.
We used who.is our example, we prefer it over other sites. Our results said “kayakadventure.com is available”. It’s a little pricey, but it’s available. If you're fine with that, it’s all yours.
You could also choose to get a domain name with .net or .org. Either way, get to registering! Just click on the “Buy it now!” button and they will take you to the registration page.
Once on the registration page, you will have the option of choosing how many years you would like to have the domain name for.
If you're not sure how this whole blogging thing is going to play out, go for a year to start. However, don’t forget to pay your renewal fee after a year if you still want it. You run the risk of losing the domain if it slips your mind.
You will also see that you have the option of choosing “Whois Privacy”. We suggest taking it, because it hides your personal information. Opting out of it means that the public can see your address, phone number, email address and other personal information. The last thing you want is a ton of spam in your inbox and telemarketers bothering you everyday.
Once you have chosen the duration and the Whois privacy. Click on “Next Step”. It’s easy from there, follow the instructions on the screen and you will be registered in no time!
Conclusion
Not being able to get a domain name you want or coming up with a name that is brand-able and fits well with your ideas for your blog can become increasingly frustrating. We totally get that!
It’s happened to almost everyone, unless they were lucky enough to get into the domain name market in the mid-nineties when registrations were cheap and plentiful.
But it’s 2017!
The market is expanding at a record pace and more extensions are becoming available and trusted. Yet, the .COM is still number one and unfortunately dictates a lot of our decisions when it comes to domain names.
It may not happen as fast or as painless as you had hoped, but eventually you’ll find the best domain name for your blog and brand. Let your creativity shine through and if you hit a snag, just move on and try again!
What's Next?
If your still having problems figuring out a domain name, leave us a comment below and will help get a domain name that your happy with!
OR
Check out our guide on “Getting Your Site Ready to Go Live: Setting Up a Blog” it has tons of useful information on how to get a domain name that you'll love and so much more!
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