How to choose a blog name

There are three simple rules to follow when choosing a blog name

 

1) It must describe your blog

It is probable that lots of people will see a link to your blog before having the chance to actually read it (in search engines, for instance). Guess what, if just by looking at the name they can figure what the blog is about they will be more likely to visit it.

9 Ways to Find a Domain Name for Any Site

With dozens or even hundreds of domain search sites available, you can easily waste hours exploring all of them.

Instead of casting a wide net, do a targeted search based on your project.

Building an affiliate or AdSense site? Use a keyword-based domain site.

Creating a new business or blog? Find a memorable, brandable domain.

Below are the best domain search sites for any purpose.

For SEO and Niche Sites: Keyword-Rich Domains

Most domain search sites specialize in keyword-rich domains. Why? They’re in high demand and are easy to serve up to potential buyers.

Lean Domain Search is a quick way to find available domains containing your target keyword.

Bust a Name will combine your potential keywords and show you the available permutations.

Panabee is really basic but will show you a short list of options including keyword combinations, spelling variations, and keywords with simple modifiers like “go” or “it.”

For potentially higher-quality domains, try aftermarket site Sedo. The prices are higher, but the domains should be more desirable.

For New Companies/Projects: Brandable Domains

Brandable domains are not for SEO. They’re for people, not search engines, to remember.
To be brandable, a domain and business name must be short, unique, and memorable.

The domain should be less than ten letters, easily pronounceable (especially to English speakers), and be spelled how it sounds.

Real words with other meanings can work well but will be harder to brand with a new identity. Think Apple or Amazon. They’re also probably already taken or too expensive.

Wordoid is a great source of word-like domains that are pronounceable but available.

You can select how natural you want the domain to sound, in which language, how many characters (max), and a word or letter combo to include in the domain.

If you can’t find what you want on Wordoid, try Domainr.

Domainr will find available and very short domains, but you’ll be stuck with a tricky subdomain and extension combo like del.icio.us.

Give it a try, but Domainr is ideal for finding short URLs for existing sites.

For Quick Set Up: Domains with an Identity

If you want to hit the ground running, you can buy a package of a brandable domain with a logo and color scheme.

Both Stylate and BrandBucket resell domains with ready-made logos as a brand package.

Both sites sort domains by category, so you can browse the possibilities for your niche. Name and logo quality seem fairly equal. The biggest difference is price.

Every domain and logo package on Stylate is $250. BrandBucket’s packages start at $595 but most are multiple thousands of dollars. The latter does offer a larger selection however.

For Any Purpose: Domains Without Effort

You can find additional tools like the ones above on NameStation. Their biggest differentiator, however, is their domain name contests.

For just $35, you’ll get 100-300 suggestions of available domains based on a project description. Once ideas start coming in, you can vote on them to give the contest entrants more direction.

When you’re tapped out of ideas or just need a starting point, turn over your project to the masses and let them do the work for you.

Regardless of your project, you should be able to brainstorm domains with just one or two sites. What are your favorite domain search engines?

200 Prefixes and Suffixes for Domain Names

If you ever tried to register some domain names you probably know how difficult it is to find something that has not been registered yet. You start with an idea for a cool website (excitement), then you narrow down a couple of keywords (more excitement) and suddenly “Damn! Who the heck registered that already!” (anger)…


One of the most effective ways to find a free domain name that is relevant to your site is to grab a keyword and add prefixes or suffixes to it, until you find something unique. Suppose you want to launch a blog about marketing, all you have to do is pick the word marketing and start adding prefixes like “emarketing.com”, “promarketing.com”, “polimarketing.com” or suffixes like “marketingspot.com”, “marketingvox.com” or “marketingpulse.com”.

Below you will find more than 200 prefixes and suffixes, so just grab your keyword and run through the list, sooner or later you will find some unique combination that no one has registered yet. Good luck!
Update: If you like this list, consider purchasing my book “Killer Domains.” It has an even bigger list with over 400 prefixes ans suffixes, and many tools and techniques to find good domain names.

Classic suffixes:

• house
• central
• point
• home
• place
• garden
• site
• spot
• park
• dome
• bay
• web
• net
• cave
• base
• heaven
• portal
• world
• camp
• network
• county
• street
• city
• alley
• depot
• valley

Other suffixes:

• now
• resources
• tools
• source
• review
• system
• book
• guide
• talk
• data
• vision
• load
• box
• focus
• beat
• voice
• share
• cafe
• nexus
• zone
• sight
• link
• lab
• insight
• vine
• board
• flow
• signs
• network
• wire
• cast
• ville
• nation
• egg
• cove
• news
• today
• future
• fun
• watch
• story
• fever
• coast
• side
• road
• heat
• bite
• insider
• club
• connect

Classic prefixes:

• the
• my
• i
• me
• we
• you
• e
• top
• pro
• best
• super
• ultra
• all
• cyber
• simply
• free
• 1st

Other prefixes:

• meta
• re
• metro
• urban
• head
• hit
• front
• techno
• ever
• rush
• think
• solo
• radio
• vip

Adjectives that can be used as prefixes:

• hot
• smart
• cool
• hot
• fast
• fresh
• sleek
• first
• daily
• best
• sharp
• light
• classic
• fast
• great
• quick

Latin prefixes:

• ubi (when)
• bis (twice)
• ad (to, towards)
• ambi (both)
• inter (between)
• liber (free)
• mono (single)
• poli (many)
• tele (distant)
• omni (all)
• exo (outside)
• extra (addition)
• hyper (over)
• hypo (under)
• intro (within)
• proto (first)
• intra (within)
• micro (little)
• macro (large)
• multi (many)
• neo (new)
• iso (equal)
• mono (one)

Latin words that can be used both as prefix and suffix:

• io (I in Italian)
• virtus (virtue)
• ego (me)
• vox (voice)
• ex (out of)
• ideo (idea)
• novo (renew)
• novus (novelty)
• pax (peace)
• rex (king)
• velox (fast)
• verus (true)
• vivo (alive)
• nova (new)

Multipliers prefixes:

• pico
• nano
• micro
• milli
• kilo
• mega
• giga
• tera
• peta

Scientific prefixes:

• aero
• cosmo
• deca
• eco
• geo
• hex
• oxy
• uni
• poly

Words that work both as prefix and suffix:

• media
• direct
• access
• ez
• easy
• info
• interactive
• biz
• buzz
• bit
• byte
• up
• tech
• on
• out
• auto
• pulse
• x
• venture
• trend
• life
• retro
• secret

Domain name search

One of the best things you can do to improve your blog is buy your own domain. Free blog platforms like Blogger are fine to get a first contact with the blogosphere, but as soon as you decide that you will invest time in your blog I highly recommend that you buy a domain.

Once you decide to buy a domain you will need to search for domains that are not registered yet, but where exactly should you go? Below I will list 3 useful services for someone looking for domain names.

Who.is

you type the domain name and the server will check the availability with most of the extensions (.com, .net, .org, .biz, .us, .tv and so on). The advantage of this service is that, if the domain is already registered, it will also display the details of the registration (date, registrant, company, etc.).

Instant Domain Search

This site checks the availability of .com, .net and .org domains only. The advantage is that it reports the results in real time. As you type the domain you will see whether it is free or not, letter by letter.

Domains Bot

If you are having trouble finding a suitable domain this service will certainly help you. All you need to do is type one or more keywords and it will generate hundreds of suggestions.