Choosing a Name For Your Blog
One of the first things you do when you start a blog is to choose a name for your blog. But this is actually two different decisions, one more important than the other.
The first and most important decision is choosing your domain name. While it is helpful for SEO reasons to have this the same as your blog title, it doesn’t have to be.
What you have to remember is that you can’t (or at least it is a lot more work to) change the name of your domain. So if it is possible that you will change topics for your blog, you want to have enough of a generic name that there is room to transition.
For example, a writing blog named howtowrite(dot)com may have trouble transitioning to a knitting blog. That is why my domain is my name. I can transition the topic to anything I want (even knitting).
But you may still want to have a title for your blog that helps readers to know what your blog is about. This is something that is easy to do and is easy to change. It takes only a few second to go from “How to Write” to “How to Knit.” You can add extra information in your tagline as well.
So when you are starting your blog, put most of your effort into picking the domain name. Figure out how likely it is that your topic will stay exactly the way you start. And consider keeping some flexibility in the domain name to adjust as things change.
