On your way to start a blog but can't decide on the blog name?

As simple as it sounds, coming up with a blog name can be a tough process. After all, you must find a name you're proud of, a name that will trigger your audience's curiosity, and it must be memorable enough so your readers won't forget it.

The blog name is what'll represent your blog across the internet.

This post will guide you tough the process of how to come up with a blog name that's a perfect fit and one you won't regret later. Go through the steps I introduced below and you'll find it easier to decide on the perfect blog name.

What are the characteristics of a great blog name?

A clever blog name has certain characteristics that make it perfect for the blog it represents. Keep in mind these aspects when brainstorming the blog name.

• Catchy
• Clear
• Short
• Unique
• Inspiring
• Meaningful

The first step to coming up with a blog name is to find different words, combinations, and terminologies associated with your blog.

To do so, first, ask yourself the following questions to clarify the objectives of your blog.

• What do you want to achieve with your blog?
• Who is your audience?

These questions not only paint a clearer picture of what the focus of your blog is. They will also help you find words that empower the purpose of your blog.

For example, if the goal of your blog is to create a strong knowledge base for people interested in a specific topic, then you can display that in your name by using words like wisdom, intelligence, science, study, training, skills.

If the purpose of your blog is to give people a fun break from their busy lives, then some examples of words that indicate this are entertain, enjoy, cheer, pun, wit.

Knowing who your audience is, also plays a role in choosing your blog name because different kinds of people react differently to various expressions.

For example, a younger audience might enjoy slang words like lit or props, while an older audience might not even know what they stand for. So you must be careful to choose a blog name that's fitted to your audience's age group.

To add even more likely words to your list, other questions to ask yourself are:

• What is your blog about?
• What keywords are used in your blog niche?

When you think of words related to what your blog is about, you should come with a pretty huge list of related words.

For example, let's say your blog is about lettering art. There are lots of related words like typing, calligraphy, font, handwriting, cursive, screening, typeface, letters, mark, ink, pen.

In this step, try gathering any words you can think of that suggest your blog niche.

Tools like UberSuggest and Ahrefs are a great blog name help. Add some words related to your blog and get back thousands of related keywords. Start searching through them and pick the words you could be using in your blog name.

One of the best SEO practices is to use keywords in your domain name so you make it easier for your blog to rank on Google.

While having a keyword in your blog name can boost your rankings a bit, it doesn't hold as much power as you might think.

If you can use a keyword in your blog name while keeping the name enjoyable, then, by all means, you should do it.

Still, don't try to stuff the domain name with keywords just for the sake of ranking higher. In 2012, Google actually went after exact-match domains to stop spamming domains such as how-to-make-money-in-one-week.com.

If you can add a keyword without being spammy, go for it. But the blog name is not the place to focus on SEO. What's most important when coming up with a blog name is its power of branding.

Visuals are a great source of inspiration and creativity. Even when you're looking to create a blog name.

And what better place for visuals than Pinterest?

Go on Pinterest and search for keywords related to your blog and start scrolling through the images.

For example, if you're starting a blog about traveling, you'll get to see a combo of images with places to visit and images that make you think about traveling. What's great is that you'll stumble upon images showcasing various objects like cameras, passports, luggage, post stamps, cards, street signs, maps.

All of these words can be used to create a unique and creative blog name.

Another way to come up with great blog name ideas is to use a domain name generator. Here are the best tools to trigger your inspiration.

Power Thesaurus

Not an actual blog name generator, but an extremely useful tool to have at hand when you're naming a blog. Get the words you collected so far and run them through the thesaurus. You'll get multiple synonyms and might find words you wouldn't think of otherwise.

Rhyme Zone

Coming up with a blog name that rhymes is almost always a great idea. Rhymes make for memorable and fun blog names. With this tool, you add your desired word and get words that rhyme with your input word.

You can also search for descriptive words, synonyms, related words, and much more. This tool is a real gem when it comes to finding the best blog name.

Wordoid

This tool gives you a bunch of made-up words. You can set the results to begin with, contain, or end with a specific word and you can also set up the maximum desired length for the blog name. While it might not give you a perfect blog name to use, it's an extremely useful tool as you can find lots of creative words combinations that can give you amazing ideas for your blog name.

Bust a Name

In this tool, you can add multiple words from your list and it will combine them in different combinations. Add as many words as you like and see what mixes come up.

Urban Dictionary

If you're looking to add slang words to make your blog name hipper, then this site will help you out. You can find lots of slangs and abbreviations that are used nowadays in the digital world.

The best ideas come when your mind is not overly obsessive on something.

After you gathered all the words you could for your blog name, start mixing them up in different expressions without focusing on how great the results are. Most of them will probably be bad. But you'll let your mind think freely.

Just play with the words and have fun.

This is a great way to brainstorm blog names and you'll see that while you keep mixing up words, other ideas will be triggered.

When naming a blog, there are some guidelines you should keep in mind. Here are the most powerful tips to help you find the best blog name.

Keep it short

You want people remembering your blog name, and this is achieved by having a quite short name. Try using words like or, for, the, to as little as possible.

Make it relevant

It's best when your blog name gives a hint to what your blog is about. Still, it's not mandatory for the name to tell what the blog is about, it's just a bonus if it does. It's more important for it not to make you think about something completely different than not making you think of the topic at all. For example, don't name your blog Paws Paradise if your blog is about technology.

Don't rush into it

If it's your first day trying to come up with a blog name, don't take the decision today. Even if you found a name you enjoy, let it sink in for a week or so. It's best to give yourself this time so you don't end up with a blog name you'll hate after 2 months.

It's important for you to be proud of the name of your blog because you'll be caring it around from now on. It will be the one representing your blog. And it's hard to grow a successful blog when you hate its name.

Still, don't get trapped into overthinking it too much because you might find yourself starting the blog later than intended because of analysis paralysis.

Don't forget about the thesaurus

Using a thesaurus when you're trying to come up with a blog name can make a huge difference over the outcome. Instead of using common and overused words, you'll get access to more powerful and fancier words.

Read it out loud

How does your blog name sounds when you read it out loud? If it's hard to pronounce, it's better to try another pick. There will be times when you'll have to say your blog name. And you want people to clearly understand what the name is. Not to mention, it's hard to process something you can't read out loud, hence it will make for something hard to remember.

Think about branding

Before you choose your blog name, think if it'll make a great brand name. A blog is a business and a brand. You'll need to brand the images you share on social media, the digital products you'll be creating, anything to do with your blog actually. So think about how the name you choose will work for this matter.

Avoid using hyphens

People often use hyphens in domain names so they better separate the different words in the name. Why you want to avoid this is because you'll make it harder for people to get to your blog by typing in the name. They won't remember you used hyphens. Also, they look bad, spammy, and you'll hate having to say my hyphen awesome hyphen blog do com each time you pronounce the name.

Double letters are tricky

While there are successful blogs containing dubbed letters in their names, it's better to avoid using them. That's because you higher the chances of losing blog traffic because of typos. For example, nextturn.com could pose some troubles. Was there a double t or only one t's?

This is a common question I came across and there's no final answer to it.

It depends on what your blog is about and what is its purpose.

If you're going to start a personal or lifestyle blog, then using your own name is totally fine. Most of the lifestyle bloggers use their own names. Same goes if you want to use the blog to sell your own services (e.g. writing services).

But if your aim is to build a blog with a more professional look that doesn't necessary revolves around you, the creator, than it's a better choice to come up with a unique and creative name that's going to be great for branding.

Once you decided what your blog name will be, you must register your domain name. But there are a couple of things left to do before you jump into finding a domain registrar.

TLD stands for top-level-domain and represents the extension of your domain. The most common extensions are:

• .com
• .org
• .net
• .co
• .us

Besides these, there are a whole lot of different TLDs you can choose from. So what should you pick?

In almost all cases, the right choice for your domain name is .com for multiple reasons:

• It's the most common TLD, hence it's the first extension people will type with a domain
• A .com website looks more trustworthy than a .net one
• If you pick a TLD like .online or .site, people won't remember it

Only use country-specific TLDs if you target a country-specific audience. For example, if you're targeting a British audience, then it's best to use the .uk TLD. In this case, the TLD will help your blog rank higher on Google.uk.

Once you decided what blog name is perfect, the next step is to run it through a domain availability checker to check its availability.

Namechk is one of the tools you can use to check a blog name availability.

When you take this step, you might find out that your desired name is not taken for the .com TLD, but it already exists on other TLDs. If this is the case, you might reconsider the name.

Ideally, your blog name is unique and it's not used anywhere.

When you check for the blog name availability, don't only look at the domains. You should also look at its availability on social media platforms.

You want to use the same social media handles overall because it'll make it easier for people to find you everywhere.

Once you set up your blog, don't forget to create accounts on all social media platforms even if you're not going to use them right away. This way you'll make sure no one will steal your handles in the meantime.

Before you jump to register your domain name, take a moment to also give it a search on Google. You never know what you might find related to that name. Maybe someone is using that expression in a bad way and if that's the case, you better know it before it's too late.

There are lots of domain registrars out there from where you can purchase your domain.

It's best to register your domain with the same provider you chose for blog hosting. It's not mandatory to do so, but it makes things way easier as you won't have to set up anything yourself. When you purchase the hosting and domain separately, you have to set up your domain on the hosting server. By registering under the same provider, you can jump over this technical step.

We have an in detail post about choosing a blog hosting service.

Going through the processes I listed above should make choosing your blog name easier and more effective.

The first step is to take some time to think about what your blog stands for. What is its purpose and what kinds of topics will be covered in the blog posts. Think about what's the feeling you want your readers to have when reading your blog and try to portray that in the name.

Also, make great use of the blog name generators I introduced in this post as they can bring out to surface a bunch of creative words and ideas.

Most importantly, pick a blog name you love. One that makes you speak about your blog proudly.

Being proud of the name yourself will make a huge difference in how you're going to promote your blog across the blogging world.

Finally, give yourself enough time to brainstorm on coming up with a blog name, but don't overthink it. Spending too much time deciding on which is the right blog name will make you fall into an analysis paralysis.

Start brainstorming your blog name and have fun with it.