A Guide to Choosing Your Blog Title

Last Updated on January 20, 2024 by Work In My Pajamas

These days, with sites such as Blogger, WordPress and Typepad out there, it is easy and free to instantly create a blog and seconds later be commenting about everything and nothing. This means that gaining a relevant, high quality audience for your blog and posts is becoming more and more of a battle. Content can be improved over time and while your poorer articles and posts will get buried away in your blog archive, your blog name, if good it’s enough, will keep visitors coming back. A bad name will lead to name changes which in turn will lead to visitors either losing you on the net or losing interest full stop.

Know Your Audience

Your blog name must reflect your content and blog image, but must also appeal to your target blog audience. If your audience are the grammar Gestapo, a group who enjoy hunting down grammatical imperfections, then misspelt names such as Flickr, Pikchur or Raptr wouldn’t be appropriate. However if your audience are from the more causal Web 2.0 crowd then they may well embrace this new “text speak” alternative spelling.

Alphabetical Placement

As more of a side note than a direct rule, you may want to think about the first letters of your blog’s name, as blog rolls and directories often list blogs alphabetically; therefore the closer you are to the start of the alphabet the more potential traffic you stand to gain.

Domain Name

Having your own domain can mean the difference between being easily found or lost in a sea of similarly named blogs. Ensuring your blog name is free as a domain is a crucial stage in setting up a blog, as if it’s not available it may be worth going back to the drawing board. It’s also worth considering the length of your domain name. Filling a domain with a ridiculously long blog title that essentially means nothing is a sure-fire way to put off visitors and search engines, which look for relevancy of both domain and title. Keep things simple and avoid extra words which add confusion, for example – “Just About Everything You Can Think Of” blog.

Keep SEO In Mind

Every blogger wants their blog to be read otherwise there would be little or no point in creating one. To get a blog read and visited you must gain an optimum position in the search engines for words related to your blog title and content topic. To do this you can either leave the search engine algorithms to pick up your content then judge its relevancy and quality, or you can help yourself gain a higher position in the search results by considering SEO when creating your blog name. Produce a blog name that contains at least one main keyword which sums up your content, while at the same time trying to keep it original by adding words that differentiate your blog from others in the field.

Originality

For any blog, standing out is important. For any subject matter or industry insight there are multiple bloggers writing multiple blogs so using some imagination and being original is important. Look at your competition and analyze what type of blog names they have. If they are all mundane and descriptive then perhaps a more creative title would give you an edge. Think about differentiating yourself in the search listings so that users can instantly see your blog name or URL.

Planning Ahead

Think about where you’d like to see your blog in 5 years time. For example, will it always be a blog focusing on SEO in the Manchester area or would you like to expand geographically to the North West UK or all of England? Think about whether you want to stick with commenting about that specific industry, or would like to expand into the digital marketing mix in the not so distant future. Focus can be a great way to keep your target audience’s interests.

The Name Depends on the Type of Blog

Naming your blog depends on what you want to get out of it and who you are trying to reach with your blog’s content. Deciding this should be one of the first things you do before actually coming up with names. Get this wrong and there may be no point in starting a blog in the first place.

Commercial Blogs

Commercial blogs are often linked to from the homepage of a commercial site. Commercial blogs have a tendency to be either named simply as ‘Blog’ or after the company’s service or brand. This is to give an instant point of reference and help visitors know exactly whose blog they are reading. Some companies disguise their blogs with people’s names or generic service titles to build up a network of followers who can then be linked back to their homepage and create traffic as well as potential customers.

Personal Blogs

Just because a blog is personal, it doesn’t mean that title doesn’t matter. Choosing a suitable blog name can help your audience relate to you, and their numbers increase. A blog name or title can immediately tell your audience a lot about your character and personality, giving them an instant reason to connect with you or leave your page. For example this blog, entitled “Work In My Pajamas“, instantly hints to any visitor that the author has a job which allows them to work from home, a passion for what they do and importantly, a sense of humor not to mention a fondness for online.

Informative Blogs

A blog name such as SEO Manchester would be considered a more formal, informative title used by an industry expert or freelance SEO consultant to talk about news and goings on in his or her industry. The title gives the visitor a clear indication of what the content of the blog will comment on and helps the search engines match the content with the name. Having a domain that contains those keywords will increase the chances of a good search engine page rank.

Lastly here is a quick checklist for a good blog name:

• Easy to Read
• Easy to Pronounce
• Easy to Spell
• Easy to Remember
• SEO Friendly
• Original

If there’s a story behind your blog name then feel free to leave a comment below.

Good luck and happy blogging.