Choosing The Right Blog Domains

When it comes to blogging there are lots of things that are easy to implement and then there are those things that are just that little more difficult, but all in all most people can set up and maintain a blog without to much trouble. There is one thing that although not difficult to implement, can be a little tricky depending on which way you look at it, choosing and managing to get the right domain.

Like I say it depends how you look at it or approach this early stage of setting up a blog. I have taken five minutes in the past to pick and purchase a domain name, but I have also taken several weeks as well, it has got to be something that you will be happy with or at least can live with, but is there more to it than that alone.

There are different theories about what is the most important thing to consider when choosing a domain name.

1. There is a theory that your domain name should be a money keyword, what I mean by this is that your domain name should be a keyword that has a decent amount of searches every month, but not to much competition. Lets say that you was going to go for the name Internetmarketing.com (not that you would get it), searches per month 2740,000, obviously very good a great chance of a lot of traffic, but the competition is 144,000,000 which is way to much competition. I try to keep the searches over 5000 per month and the competition less that 50,000.
2. There is also a theory that your domain name should be a dot com, as the search engines favor the dot com extension over dot net, dot org or any of the other extensions. I think that most people out of choice would go for the dot com if possible, but these are not always easy to get and it is very annoying when a lot of the dot coms are just parked domains.
3. Here is another theory, it is best to have an easy to remember name, one that is short and does not have more than four words, this is understandable when you think of Facebook, Twitter and Google, but they are not very easy to come by, there is a lot of competition for one word domains.

There are some other theories floating around, but these are probably the main three. So how do we approach these theories, if we conform to all three then we could be searching for months to find a domain name that is not taken or parked. Sometimes you just have to make some compromises. So I thought I would answer each theory in turn and this is only my opinion.

1. It would be great to get a name that conformed to a high search volume and low competition and although it is difficult, it is not impossible to do, I have managed it on a few of my sites. Yes you have the added advantage of more traffic or that is the theory. I can honestly say that those sites I have managed it on did not take off any quicker than the sites that I didn’t manage it on, so I gained no real advantage. Also even if your domain name is not an optimal keyword, as long as you target some optimal keywords with your post titles then you will still get those into the search engine listings. So I am not convinced on this theory.
2. The dot com theory, I always try to get the dot com, but I also have dot net and dot org extensions and I have seen no evidence of favor to the dot coms, my net and org sites do just as well, some even better. So again I see no real convincing evidence of this theory.
3. The easy to remember short name theory, well I am sure that nobody wants to have a domain  name that is six, seven or eight words long and most of mine are two words and my longest are four words, I have never been able to find a one word name that relates to my sites topic. But again the shorter names do not perform any better than the longer ones, although that said I wouldn’t want to go over four words in a domain.

So what is the conclusion to these theories, well I only have a couple of domains that conform to all three of these theories and they do not out shine any of my others, yes I try to get a good keyword and I always go for dot com if I can, I also try for the shortest easiest name to remember, but sometimes you could be searching for months and still not manage to achieve all three.

My own theory is to try, but not get to caught up in meeting all three, the most important things are to get a name you are happy with and then turn your attention to keyword optimization on your content and promotion of your site.

If you have any question or views on this subject then please do leave a comment below.

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