How To Create A Name For Your Blog

Lesson 1: How to Create A Great Name For Your Blog

Naming your blog
When it comes to naming your blog, you may think this is a pretty easy and personal task. You’ve obviously had names that mean something special to you, swishing around in your head for a long time.


Wait. Actually, this is one of the hardest things when it comes to starting a blog. If you don’t mind your blog being another one of the millions of personal online journals no one else is interested in, it would be fine to give it an individually creative name.

However, I suspect you’re hoping to manage a blog that will be publicly read, will be listed by search engines, and that people will search for when browsing the Internet. In that case you’ll have to think carefully about what name you wish to use. To find your blog name you must first consider of the following points. 
Recommended reading: How Do I Blog page for more blogging tutorials.  


What is your purpose
Think carefully about the purpose of your blog. What are you giving to your readers? Blogs that are streamlined and targeted (not niche) have a better chance to be listed high in the search engines (in the long run) than more general blogs with pick and mixes. Sure, mix-bags blogs will be popular too. I have friends who have well-liked general blogs, but they’ve had to work longer and harder for their sites to rate high in the system. If you’re looking for staying power, and if you establish yourself as (say) a collector or expert in Spring flowers, after a while Google will be sending traffic your way when someone types in ‘Spring Flowers’ in the search panel. Take heed that it will take at least a year for this to start happening, but the more it happens, the more it’s likely to happen again and again.


Of course you may wish not to only stock pictures and information about Spring Flowers. You may have all types of other regular posts and images, but your main purpose has to be kept firmly in mind when considering your blog’s name.


Who are you targeting
In other words, who will your customers be? Who is your material aimed at? Are you targeting older people, women, younger people, gardeners, other bloggers? You also have to work this out before you name your blog. Your mood and tone and the words you use to name your blog would be slightly different when considering your audience. For example you may want to use words like ‘information,’ ‘facts about,’ ‘all about’ for students and younger people. If your audience are gardeners you may use words like ‘expert,’ ‘seasonal tasks,’ and ‘planting’ in the name. If you’re catering for general web users and bloggers surfing for just the pictures you may just want to say ‘photos of’ or ‘pictures’ in your title.


Popularity in the name
Again, using the scenario of spring flowers, you want to know exactly what terms or phrases are most popular in the searches for your specific topic. Visit the Google Keywords https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal page and type in your topic. Consider all the words that come up in your selected keyword phrase. You have the option to use just keywords, or general descriptive words or phrases in your search. It’s a good idea to make your choice depending on which phrase/word comes up more often when people are looking for information on or pictures of (spring flowers) your chosen topic.


There are few other things, but as a new blogger, these are some of the most important ones when choosing your name. Once you’ve considered all of the above, you’re ready to type in the name of your blog. Make sure the spelling is perfect and to ensure you get first dibs when people type in search words, express it in the way you would, were you typing in an actual request in your favourite search engine. For example, you want to blog about pets for young children. You won’t name your blog, ‘My lovely house pets.’ You’ll go with a name like, ‘Best Start-Up Pets for Young Children’ simply because this is what mothers would type into their search engine, were they looking for information about pets that are suitable for their little kids.


You’re ready to move on, but there is one important thing you should do before your name is set up.


Describing your blog
On your dashboard (Blogger) under setting, you’re required to include a description of your blog. As far as possible (and as naturally as possible) use some the words you found at the Google keywords site, stating clearly what your blog is about. Don’t leave this panel empty because you’ll be doing yourself a disservice. We will talk about this later, but on your Settings page (Blogger) under basic, you can opt to add your blog to Blogger’s listings, or ‘let search engines find your blog.’ A blog description therefore, is very important if you want your blog to be included in these lists. Your blog name should reflect its description.


You’re now ready to name your blog. Part two (link immediately below deals with creating blog posts). 


Part 2: Blog posts (how do I blog, part 2) 





3 comments:

Anonymous November 21, 2009 at 8:55 PM  

You're right, the name of the blog is really important, and it does take lots of work..

Tamika: November 22, 2009 at 3:28 AM  

It's funny because for me everything started with the name. I feel in love with most of the blogs that I follow because of the uniqueness of the name and content associated with it.

Anne Lyken-Garner November 22, 2009 at 9:47 AM  

Thanks Icy.
Tamika, welcome to my blog. Please visit again.

Anne's a published author, freelance writer and experienced editor. She's just signed her second publishing contract this year with 2 separate publishing houses. You can hire her or see her available books in the side panel on the right.
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