4 Things to Consider When Choosing a Domain Name for Your Blog

217: 4 Things to Consider When Choosing a Domain Name

This episode is perfect for anyone who’s preparing and planning their first blog, as well as those thinking about starting a second blog.

Note: if you are starting a blog sign up below to get notified of our brand new course on the topic which will go live early next year – and check out our article on how to start a blog in 5 steps.

Today I’m talking about what to consider when naming your blog and choosing a domain name for it. I’ll share four things to consider when choosing a domain name. You want one that:

  • helps you achieve your goals
  • will have a memorable impact on your visitors
  • helps you to build your brand
  • sends the right message to Google and the search engine bots. (Domain names have an impact on SEO.)

I’ll also talk about legal implications of choosing a domain name, because it’s important to stay within the law.

Links and Resources on 4 Things to Consider When Choosing a Domain Name for Your Blog:

Legal Links:

Aussies:

 

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Hi there. My name is Darren Rowse. Welcome to Episode 217 of the Problogger Podcast. I’m the blogger behind problogger.com – a blog, a podcast that you’re listening to, event, job board, and a series of ebooks all designed to help you as a blogger to start a blog, to create great content to grow your audience, and to build some income from that blog. You can learn more about what we do at Problogger over at problogger.com.

Today’s episode is for those of you who are just starting out. It’s perfect for those of you who are considering starting a blog in the preparing, planning stage, or for those of you who want to start a second blog or even a second business of some kind, because we’re gonna talk about things to consider when you are naming your blog, or finding a domain name for your blog to be more specific. I said both of those things because they really are tied together. Ideally you want a domain name that is the same as the name of your blog, or at least tied to it.

In today’s episode, I wanna share with you four things to consider to find something that is going to suit your needs in terms of a domain. Something that’s gonna help you to achieve your goals in blogging, whatever those goals are. Something that’s gonna impact the people who come to your blog and be memorable, but also something that is gonna help to build your brand, to communicate something, a meaning, to those people.

Also, something that’s going to communicate something to Google and the bots, the machines, the little robots that come to your site as well and help to determine how your site will be ranked, because your domain name has an impact on SEO. Lastly, something that is gonna help you to stay within the law because there are some legal things that you need to know about choosing a domain as well.

If that is of interest to you, listen on. I’ve got today’s show notes with some further reading for you. This is actually based upon an article that we published on Problogger a year or so ago, I’ve updated it slightly but you can find the original article on today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/217. I almost forgot the podcast bit there, you would think after 200 episodes, I would’ve got it. It’s problogger.com/podcast/217 where you can find that further reading and a full transcript of what I’ve got for you today.

I wanna say right upfront, there’s a lot of different opinions on this. The main thing that I really wanna say is whilst I’m going to talk about some ideal scenarios today, I’ve made every mistake in the book. Everything I’m gonna teach you today, I’ve done the opposite at one point or another. I still had success with my blogs, I want you to keep that in the back of your mind. Choosing the right domain is going to help you with your blogging, it’s going to help you with your Search Engine Optimization and your branding and all of that type of stuff.

You can make mistakes in this and fix them, or you can make mistakes and still have success. I’m gonna tell you about some of the mistakes I’ve made towards the end of today’s podcast. I wanna put that right up front, particularly for those of you who are gonna listen to this and go, “He said the exact opposite of what I’ve already done.” I just wanna hammer that home, I have had wrong domains and I still have a blog that isn’t ideal in terms of its domain, but I still had some success with it. Choose the right domain and it is going to help you in your blogging.

I sometimes wonder what would’ve happened if I had chosen the right domain on some of my blogs from the start. Right from the beginning. Let’s just go back to basics for those of you who are a bit fuzzy on what is a domain and why you would want your own. Your domain name is, for Problogger it’s problogger.com. It’s that little bit that you type into Google’s Chrome browser or Safari, it’s where your blog can be found, it’s the address for your blog.

Having your own domain name is really desirable for bloggers for many reasons. This is something that a lot of bloggers when they first start out, they will start on a site like blogger or wordpress.com and they will use the domain name that is provided for them by those services because those services host your blog on their own service and they usually have some wordpress.com/yourblogsname. It’s on their domain name. That’s okay when you’re just starting out.

It’s desirable to get your own domain name at some point because it’s gonna help to build some credibility with your audience. When someone sees that you are on blogger.com/yourblogname, there’s a confusion that happens there because you are on blogger’s brand name and your blogger’s brand name or WordPress brand name is in your domain name as well as your own. That impacts your brand, it impacts the sense of professionalism around your blog that people get from you.

It also is more complicated to communicate if you have to tell everyone it’s blogger.com/yourname, that’s a lot to remember for people. It’s longer, it’s more complicated and it confuses the brand. Ideally, you want to have your own domain name. It also gives you some other added bonuses, it can help you with search engine optimization to have it on your own. It also helps in terms of having your own email address so you can have an email address [email protected], that’s my email address, if you wanna ever contact me.

That communicates a little bit more professionalism rather than having to rely upon a Gmail address which again can confuse your brand a little and it comes across with some people if you got a Gmail address rather than your domain address. That can come across maybe a little bit like it’s a bit of a hobby for you. There’s some added bonus in there in terms of having your own domain. They are some of the reasons that you would want your own domain if you’re wondering why you would want it.

Let’s move on to some of the factors to consider when choosing that domain. I’ve got four main things that I wanna talk about. I guess what I wanna say is there are billions of websites, I don’t exactly know how many domains are out there but there’s more than a billion websites I’m told out there. You want yours to stand out, and a big part of what you want to do in choosing a domain name is choose something that’s going to stand out, something that’s gonna be easily remembered.

That’s harder to do today than it was when I started out because a lot of the good domain names, a lot of the most common words that we would think of in domains are taken. But it’s still important to try and choose something that’s gonna be easy to remember and something that’s gonna accurately describe what it is that you do and that’s gonna help you to rank in Google. There are four main things that I wanna work through here. Some of these come down to personal taste, but try and keep these four things in mind as you are considering it.

The other thing I’d say, just before I get into these is don’t rush this process. Don’t rush the process. The mistakes I’ve made have largely come as a result of me rushing through it and not involving too many other people in the discussion. One of the things I would recommend that you do is to do this with other people. I actually find that I’ve made better decisions about domains and names of my blog when I bounce my ideas off other people.

Find someone who is not gonna shut down all of your ideas right at the front. They’re gonna be good at brainstorming with you, but also someone that does have a bit of a critical eye on this, and maybe two different people – one to brainstorm with them, one to be the judge or the critic with. Because bringing a bit of a critical eye is going to point out some of the mistakes that I’ve made basically.

Let’s get into these four things.

The first perspective that you wanna consider is the human perspective. I’m gonna talk about bots and robots and SEO and that type of thing. That’s important. But I think it’s much more important to consider the other person who’s gonna be on the other side of your content and the other side of your blog. This is the case for me with everything that I talk about with ProBlogger. It comes down to the content, the way you build community, the way you build readers. You always need to be considering the other person, the person on the other side of your content.

It’s not just about making money. It’s not just about getting lots of traffic. It’s about serving people because in my experience, if you serve people and if you’re considering the person on the other side of your content, all the other stuff tends to flow easier, more easily. The human perspective is the first thing that we wanna consider. Particularly what we wanna focus upon is making it easy for the other person. The person is gonna come and read your blog. You wanna make it as easy as possible. You don’t want barriers in the way of them coming to your blog.

When you’re thinking about your domain, you want something that is simple to read. Something that’s simple to say. Something that is simple to remember. If it’s hard for them to remember what it is because it’s complicated, it’s got lots of words or it’s cryptic in some way, that’s gonna be a barrier for them to coming back. They may come the first time because they find you being shared on Twitter but they’re never gonna come back again because they’re not gonna be able to remember that name.

It’s gotta be easy to remember. It’s gotta be easy to say because you want people to be able to spread it by word of mouth, and you wanna be able to say it simply as well. It’s gotta be something that’s simple to read. The words in your domain, if you’ve got more than one word, they need to be pretty obvious what those words are. You don’t want them to run into each other and have different interpretations of what those letters could mean. Often I’ve seen domain names and I thought, Does is say this or does it say that? because there are multiple ways of reading that in the content.

Make it easy.

One of the core values of marketing is to be memorable and to be simple. Simple is good. Short is good if you can. It’s getting harder to have short domains. I know all the four-letter domain names are gone now. You can probably buy them at a premium cost now, but they’ve all been taken as far as I know. It’s hard to find a four-letter one. There are probably some five- and six-letter ones around, but it’s gonna be hard to find one that has actual words in it. They’ll be a random jumble of our letter. Short is good, it’s not always easy to find something that’s super short.

If you are going to create something with a number of words, maybe two or three words at the most. Digital Photography School I think is a long domain and I’ve got hyphens in there as well which is a mistake that I’ll talk about later. Digital Photography School is relatively easy to remember, it’s a bit of a jumble to type in though, it’s quite long. One of the things I do wish with Digital Photography School, it’s bit of a jumble for me to even say it now, is that maybe it was a bit shorter. I think it’s good on the memorability front.

You’re never gonna find something that’s got all of the things that I’m talking about. You’re always gonna be compromising on some level. But short is good. No phonetic bits to confuse people’s ears, no unusual spelling ideally. If you can do that, I think you’re well on the way to creating a good domain. Short.

A note about hyphens. I have already talked about hyphens… may make your preferred domain easier to register because less people will be putting hyphens in. But it is tricky for people to remember, and it’s tricky for people to communicate and for you to communicate.

I know for a fact every time I say I’ve got a blog about blogging, it’s called Digital Photography School, I usually just say “Google it” because we do rank in Google for Digital Photography School. If someone wants the domain, it’s digital-photography-school.com. It’s quite long and it’s more complicated for me to say. I do hear people all the time saying “It’s digitalphotographyschool.com”, and I’ve seen people link to it in that way. I don’t own that domain. I couldn’t get it. People wanna charge me a fortune for it. It’s hard to communicate.

I particularly would say avoid hyphens if you can. It’s gonna make it hard to communicate and hard to remember.

Numbers are another one. I know a lot of people add a number to their ideal word. That could be one way to get your word in there, but it does bring confusion again. If I had problogger9.com for instance, is ‘nine’ the number nine, the numeral, or is it spelled out nine? That can cause confusion as well when you got numbers in there. Ideally what you would probably wanna do if you do wanna use a number is to register both.

If I had to do that, and I would never do it, problogger9.com and I would also register probloggernine.com and forward both to the one that I’m using. That would be the way to get around that, but again numbers can bring a little bit of confusion to that. Although if you can get both, maybe it would work. Making it easy for your reader is really important.

Making it readable is so important as well. Have a look at how your words run together. Are there any surprises in there that perhaps you haven’t thought of?

Sometimes people choose a domain and then someone else looks at it and says, “There’s another word in there that you probably don’t want in there.” For example if you had any probloggersexcited. Probloggersexcited, that might be a good domain name because you wanna talk to excited probloggers but if you think about it, there’s an ‘s’ and then the first two letters of excited are ‘ex’. You’ve got an s-e-x in there, that may not be ideal for you brand. People will look at that and they’ll only see one thing, and that’s bit of a recipe for disaster in terms of your brand. Be thinking about how those words might join together. Are there any other little hidden surprises in there?

Another thing I would say is you might wanna steer clear of slang, or any jargon or corporate speak. Different countries also have different vernacular. You wanna maybe run your domain name by someone from a different culture if you’re using a slang word, something that you understand but does everyone else understand what that means because you might end up with a domain that people are really confused by because you are using a word that means something different in a different part of the world.

The example that Aussies always use, we call flip-flops that you put on your feet, my American friends call them flip-flops, we call them thongs. That can cause a lot of confusion in America when you are talking about wearing thongs to the beach and I wear thongs every summer to the beach, that confuses people. I know that just brought a whole lot of imagery in some of your minds that you don’t want there. You wanna be thinking about Does this word mean the same thing in different parts of the world?, particularly if you wanna have a global brand.

The last thing with readability is make it pronounceable. You want people to be able to say it clearly. I had a domain twitip – t-w-i-t-i-p. It was gonna be Twitter tips. People just couldn’t pronounce that at all. I had all kinds of weird pronunciations, ‘twee tip’ and all kinds of things. It didn’t really communicate what it was about even though it was clever and it had a bit of Twitter and a bit of a tip in it, people just couldn’t pronounce it right. Even ProBlogger, people sometimes struggle with that and because it’s an unfamiliar word, it’s not a real word. I made that one up although that was good for a branding perspective. That’s what I wanna talk about next.

First perspective to consider is the humans on the other side of your domain. The second perspective is the brand. The first impression of your domain really counts. Your domain name is an incredible opportunity. You have an incredible opportunity to communicate something about what it is that you are doing. People want to know what is going on on your website in the shortest amount of time possible. Your domain name is one of the signals to them as to what you do.

If you have a domain name that communicates, “This is what this blog is about”, that’s gonna help to speed up that first impression. Digital Photography School I think immediately communicates to people that this place teaches photography. Sometimes it does communicate some other things as well. It communicate some things that we don’t do and that is one of the weaknesses of it. We get emails from people saying, “Where is your School? What kind of classrooms do you use?” They imagine a real school. That’s I guess another example of something that’s communicated by the domain that isn’t true. We have to work against that in our About page.

ProBlogger I think, even though it’s a made-up word, most people understand what that is. It’s gonna be something that’s gonna teach people to blog professionally or to be professional in their blogging. Your domain name is a real opportunity. Think about your domain name and how you can communicate what it is that you do.

Again, this is another thing to test with someone. Tell a friend who doesn’t know what you’re considering doing, what that domain name is. Ask them what they think a site with that domain name would do. It will be really fascinating to hear whether they get it or not. Do they come up with something that aligns with what it is that you want to do on that domain? Or do they come up with something completely different? Because that will be a signal that maybe your domain name isn’t as clear as you want it to be.

Another thing to consider for a brand perspective, but also again comes into the human element that I’ve already talked about, is the extension that you choose for your domain. An extension is the categories of internet domain, the most common one is .com, problogger.com. It represents the word commercial, that’s where the .com comes from, it’s the most common one that is used. Most businesses would prefer the .com domain because it’s highly recognizable as a symbol for having a business presence on the internet.

It’s also the most easy one to remember. What else I would recommend that you do choose a .com particularly if you’re going to have a global brand, if you are trying to reach people from around the world, there are other options there as well. There are some newer ones like .biz or .info or .me or .shop and the list could go on and on. You might wanna choose one of those if it does really relate to what you’re trying to do and if the .com is already gone and if you’re not gonna get yourself into legal trouble as well.

The other option is .com.au which is the local domain for Australia, it’s the local one. If you are trying to reach a local audience, that can be another way to go because again it will be familiar and memorable for people from that local audience. It’s also, from my experience, gonna help you to rank a little better in google.com.au, the local Google, from an SEO perspective. You might wanna consider some of those localized domains as well.

This is another mistake that I made, if you wanna put it that way. When I started, problogger.com was taken. Someone was squatting on problogger.com. They had the idea to set up, I think it was gonna be a hosting company and they never actually went with it. Once I approached them initially to buy it, they were interested in selling it that time. Because they weren’t using it, I thought legally I was able to use that word so I registered problogger.net. Once that worked, .net is relatively familiar to people, it was relatively easy for people to remember.

I did see a lot of people linking to that other domain. It wasn’t until years later that I bought problogger.com then things got so much easier in terms of that memorability and the building of the brand as well. I don’t know if people see .com a little bit more credible source as well, that impacts your brand.

The other thing that you wanna consider from a brand perspective and also from a legal perspective which we’ll talk about a little later is that you want uniqueness with your brand. You don’t want to have a brand name that is a copy of someone else’s, that will definitely get you into legal trouble if they registered it and you can run into some issues there. You also don’t want something too similar to someone else as well because it’s going to be confusing for your readers. If you choose something that’s already an established brand and you do something very similar to that, people could accuse you of copying them as well. Do some research on Google to see what different blogs and other businesses are already out there on similar domains to you.

Just because you can get the domain doesn’t mean it’s a good idea if you are choosing something that’s too similar. Google it, look on sites like bloglovin.com to find out who’s blogging under what names. Sometimes people actually have a blog called something on a different domain. They may not have registered the domain but they actually call their blog the exact same thing for some reason. Which is partly their fault – they should’ve registered the domain. Again, it could get you into trouble there, it could end up being a bit of a bun fight. Just make sure you’re not doing something too similar.

The other thing in terms of uniqueness is making sure your domain name is available on other social media sites as well. You want to check on Twitter and Facebook just to see who else is using that name and to register that as well. There’s a shortcut for this, I think it’s a site called KnowEm which is a good domain name in some ways – it’s k-n-o-w-e-m dot com, but it’s a bit of a cryptic domain name as well. Maybe an example of one that is cool on some levels, KnowEm, but it’s also hard to remember. As far as I know, that site will also help you to check whether different brands are available on social networking sites.

The human perspective was number one. The brand perspective is number two. The third perspective you wanna think about is SEO, Search Engine Optimization. Just about everyone is looking to rank really well on Google, and to help you to rank well in Google you can choose a domain name that is gonna help you to do that. Some people don’t really consider SEO at all and they end up with a clever, funny, cryptic domain name, and perhaps KnowEm is a good example of that. It’s a domain that is being chosen, I suspect more, for the uniqueness and for the branding side of things. It’s not gonna help that company to rank in Google from a keyword perspective. This is a choice that you need to make if you want to rank in Google. If you want your domain to help you to rank in Google, you want to be choosing a domain that does have some keywords in it that you want to rank for. The words in your domain can help with that.

Again, you don’t wanna put SEO first. You don’t wanna put it at the expense of the human and the brand because you could have a domain that’s got all your keywords in it but it might be really long and really hard to remember, really confusing for people. That’s probably not ideal unless you just want search traffic. You wanna get the balance right in this. But it is important to think about SEO, and what impact the words in your domain can have upon that SEO.

Digital Photography School was what I wanted to rank for as I began to think about what I wanted to rank for. I wanted Digital Photography in there, particularly I wanted to communicate there were a teaching site. Google is smart enough to know that school means teaching. It helped us with that. I also did a little bit of keyword research and found that the people were searching for the words photography school. I knew there were some search traffic to be gained from having that as well.

Think about the words that you wanna be found for. If you can incorporate them in, that can really help as well. Another SEO thing that you might wanna think about is just check whether the domain that you’re about to buy has previously been registered. Sometimes spammers buy out domain names or people who are doing dodgy things on the internet and then they abandon them later once they’ve used them up. That abandoned domain name may have been looked down upon by Google. they may have been banned by Google. They may have been penalized by Google and that may be still hanging onto that domain name.

You don’t wanna get a domain name that has been previously used in a bad way because Google is gonna look at that and go, “They’re back again.” Some of that may have an ongoing impact with you. You can buy domains that have been previously used. There may even be some benefits of doing that because they may have been used in a good way and there may be links coming in from other sites to that site. But if it’s been used in a bad way, that can have a bit of a negative thing.

Thinking about keywords, a good exercise to do is really just to get a piece of paper and to brainstorm the words that people might be typing into Google to find the site that you’re looking at. You want to be particularly paying attention on choosing for your domain name, the broadest, biggest keywords of your site. You don’t wanna get too nichey with the words. If you are going to write about digital photography, you ideally want digital photography in the words. If you’re talking about blogging, you want ‘blogging’ or ‘blogger’ or ‘blogs’ or that type of word in there.

You don’t wanna get too nichey, you don’t want to be bringing in all the keywords that you might ever possibly use because when you write a blog post, those words will start to appear in the extension that’s added to your domain name. If I write on Problogger a post about SEO, problogger.com/tips-seo will naturally come in there if I want it to. Those nichey words will be added to your domain name as you write blog post. You wanna think about the broad words that you wanna be found for. Don’t get too nichey there.

You certainly don’t want a domain name like Digital Photography School Portraits, Fashion and Travel. That’s just too long, it breaks all those other rules we’ve got. Google is also gonna think that you’re keyword stuffing as well. Think about the broad words if you can. Is your site about recipes? You probably want the word ‘recipe’ in there. Is the site about fashion? Words like ‘style’ or ‘fashion’ and some of those bigger words will work. You don’t wanna get too nichey with them.

The other thing I’d say is don’t get too caught up about the keywords, Google isn’t as fooled as much as it used to be from what I can see. There are factors that Google certainly looks at the words, but it’s not the be all and end all. It is harder and harder to get those keywords into domains these days because there are so many out there. If you can do it, that would be great. I think it’s probably more important to have brandability and thinking about human. You can always get those words into your URLs by writing about those topics in your blog posts.

The last perspective to think about is the legal perspective. I wanna state up front, I’m not a lawyer, this is not a legal advice, putting that right out there. You do wanna think about copyright and trademark and particularly be looking at what other people are using already and copying it as I’ve already talked about. It’s gonna cost you a lot of time and money and heartache if you’re sued for infringement later because you started trading as a company with the same name or too similar a name to someone else. Copyright is really important to think about.

Check and recheck other blogs, other sites, other company names before you register your domain. Don’t just rush and buy a domain and start blogging under that name. You wanna really be thinking about it. You can also check trademark business names in your local area. If you’re in the US, you can check out who owns what in terms of copyright at copyright.gov or uspto.gov. Patent trademark office might even be worth looking at if you’re in Australia. I’ve got some links for you in the show notes today as well. Just simply doing some Googling and looking on Bloglovin and Facebook and Twitter will give a sense for is there anyone using that very similar names to you. That will really help a lot.

Include that last one in thinking about the domain name, because I hate for you to register something that’s great for humans and branding and SEO only to find out that someone’s already done that and you’re gonna be sued. You don’t wanna do that.

One more thing that I’ll mention are a few tools that you might wanna check out to help you with the domain name registration process. One I mentioned earlier was KnowEm, which is a great little tool that you just pop in the name of your blogs, you put in ProGlogger, you hit the check it button and it will check with 500 social networks. Other places like the USPTO trademark database to check your brand, and to work out whether other people are using it already.

It would check sites like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, WordPress. It checks Flickr, Delicious. It’s gonna check a lot of different social networks including the main ones like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Medium as well, that’s one tool. The link to that is in today’s show notes.

Another one that I have used, and I’ve used this for years now, is Nameboy. It is a domain name generator. You put in the primary word that you wanna rank for, so you might put in ‘blogging’ if you are doing a blog about blogging and then a secondary word, so ‘pro’ or ‘professional’.

It basically spits out lots of different options and you can have a couple of different things, you can do ‘allow hyphens’ which we’ve talked about. No, that’s not been the best thing to do, or you can allow rhyming words as well. It will then spit out some words and it will tell you most importantly, this is really important if you are doing a lot of potential things. It will tell you which ones are available. It will give you some options for buying them as well. You pop in your words and it will come out with all the different variations.

I just typed in ProBlogger and I can see that problogger is taken, problogger.com is taken, problogger.net is taken, problogger.org is taken, problogger.info is taken, all the probloggers are taken but it comes out with other words, [email protected] is available or bloggepro is available, which probably you wouldn’t want because it’s not that memorable. But it gives you some different options. It looks at different words that you might want to do, so prosomething is available if you wanted that.

Have a play with that. It is hard to find them these days ,but it’ll give you some options there. It also gives you the ones that are up for auction as well. It will give you an idea of what price you might need to pay for some of those. That was Nameboy and KnowEm.

The other one I would just say in terms of where to register, there are plenty of places you can register domains today. I’ve always done it through GoDaddy, I know some people love GoDaddy, some people don’t. It’s just where I do it and I keep all of mine, I’ve got a lot of domains that I bought over the years that I haven’t actually used, probably need to do a bit of a cleanse there. I like to just have them under one place, I don’t want to be buying domains in lots of different places. There are other options out there. You can find those links in today’s show notes.

The last thing I’ll say is what I’ve said is not hard and fast, apart from that legal one, I think that’s hard and fast. I’ve made some bad decisions in this, I have digital-photography- I can’t even say it because I’ve got hyphens in it. I’ve made a mistake but that site gets four million people a month to it. It’s done okay because the content is good and because I’ve worked harder building community and I’ve worked harder building the brand. Whilst it’s not a perfect domain, I’ve worked harder on other things.

It’s the other things that are really gonna be the key to your success, it’s not your domain name. It’s not going to be the single key, it’s one of the things that’s gonna help you. You may have made a mistake already, that’s okay as long as it’s not an illegal mistake. But do pay attention to it if can.

The other thing I’ll say is all the things I’ve talked about, you’re never gonna get something that’s perfect on all fronts. You do need to make some compromises there. Occasionally you might find something that’s great for humans, branding, SEO and legal. Most cases, you’re probably gonna find something that’s better for branding and not so great for SEO, or maybe it’s great for SEO but it’s not so good for the human. You gotta make some compromises around that. Personally if I was making choices today, I’d be thinking about the human and branding more so than SEO. I think SEO is great to think about if you can, but it can be worked on in terms of the blog post that you do and choosing keywords in your blog titles, that type of thing.

There’s more to your blog’s success or failure than the domain names, but make a wise choice as you do. Hopefully some of what I’ve talked about today is gonna help you in that regard.

Today’s show notes are over at problogger.com/podcast/217. You can find the links there for some of those legal things, those legal checks that you might wanna do. You’ll also find the original article that Stacey Roberts wrote that I based today’s podcast on.

Also, the thing I would say is if you are starting a blog or you’re thinking about starting a blog, we’ve got a resource coming out for you in the coming month. It’ll probably come out late December, early January actually. It’s gonna walk you through how to start a blog and it’s gonna be more than anything we’ve ever done before. It’s actually gonna walk you through in great detail.

What I’ve talked about today is actually gonna be part of that little course we’re putting together.

If you are thinking of starting a blog early next year for 2018, head to our show notes today and subscribe to our newsletter. We will notify you when that resource is ready late this year, early next year. I really look forward to launching that because it’s gonna be a resource, it’s gonna help a lot of people.

If you think you’re starting a blog, head over to the problogger.com/podcast/217 and subscribe. There’ll be an option there for you to subscribe to the newsletter, and we will let you know as soon as that course is ready to go. It’s free, free course, completely free.

I look forward to launching that, that’s bit of a teaser of what’s coming on Problogger. Hopefully this helps you. I’d love to hear any other things that you would add to the advice if you’ve already started a blog, you can head to the show notes and add a comment, give your own advice there, or you can do it over in the Problogger Community Facebook Group.

Thanks for listening. I’ll be back next week in Episode 218 of the Problogger podcast. Have a great week.

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