If you are going to have a self-hosted blog then you’ll need to secure a domain name. In this post, I provide 4 simple steps to help you discover a domain name appropriate for your message and topic.

1. Decide what your blog will be about.

This is really your first step. Choosing a domain name is going to be much more difficult if you don’t know what you’ll be writing about. Know who your target audience is going to be. You can use your name or variances of it. Using your name provides you some freedoms. One of them being… If your topics change you will still have a working domain name.

When writing about a narrow niche topic such as vegetarian cooking … using your name wouldn’t be the best choice.

2. Keep it short.

The ideal domain name is 2 short words. This is not usually possible anymore unless you use your first and last name. Having said that, you may still face the challenge many others before you have with your name being unavailable. The reality is it’s tough to secure a 2-word domain name but not entirely impossible. If you have succeeded at finding a two-word domain name you’re in luck! Such domains are like gold these days!

A combination of three words can work well if you can’t secure on with two. As a wise teacher once suggested to me … enjoy the process. Have fun with it. This is your beginning!

3. You can alternatively select your domain name and craft a working title from it.

This is exactly what I did. My chosen domain name address is a shortened version of my first name blended with the writer (coriwriter.com).  Blogging With Purpose being a title which extends from my domain name.

Let’s say you want to blog about cooking. 

The best vegetarian cooking recipes from around the world. If the title you want is “The Best Vegetarian Cooking Recipes From Around The World” what you have then is a long title. Within this title is a great domain name, title, and tagline. Taglines provide your readers with a brief snippet of what your site is about.

How can you make this title work in with your domain name, title and tagline description?

You could shorten it to create a domain name out of this long title. Example: Vegetarian Cooking with a tagline The Best Vegetarian Cooking Recipes From Around The World.

It is more than likely that ‘vegetarian cooking’ is unavailable.

You can personalize it with your first name in front of it.

Example: Title: Cori’s Vegetarian Cooking Tagline: The best vegetarian cooking recipes from around the world. Domain Name: corisvegetariancooking.com

[bctt tweet=”Domain names and websites are internet real estate. – Marc Ostrofsky -” via=”no”]

4. What do you choose? .com, .org, or .net?

There are many endings to choose from but we aren’t going to go into all of them in this post. I’ve narrowed it down to the most popular three. These are the most commonly used top-level end to your domain name URL. All originally created with a unique individual purpose of their own. .com, .net, .org explained

.com  It was intended for the purpose of a profit-making commercial type use. .net   This one was usually used for network related type domains .org   Sites using .org were typically used by those that had a non-profit organization. Many non-profit organizations use the .org ending.

In current day most people do not focus so much on the differences between these endings to our URLs. Using .com is still the most popular choice for most blogs.

Further reading on choosing a domain name…

Finding the Perfect Domain Name for Your Blog by Dmitry Davydov

Four Considerations in Picking a Website Name by Michael Hyatt

18 Tools for Picking the Perfect Domain Name  by Mashable

Join the conversation

What challenges have you faced if any in selecting your domain name? How did you finally choose the right one for you?