The Dos and Don'ts of Choosing a Blog Title

by Edward Stern who also writes on criminal justice and earning a christian counseling degree for various different websites.

Your blog is your baby. Ever since you bought a domain, paid for web hosting, installed Wordpress, and picked a template, you have begun to shape and guide a new life into the blogosphere. Going shopping for your baby is the easy part -- there are all kinds of custom templates that will look so cute on the addition, welcoming but not amateurish, dignified and magnetic. You want your baby to be the popular kid, so you've help trick the little guy out with all the newest plugins, come up with a unique brand, and picked the perfect fonts and color schemes to help it stand out.

But then there's the name, just a few simple words that could make or break your newborn, dooming any chance it has at success from the very start. You wouldn't name your kid Quackenbush or Gertrude, so don't make your blog want to use its middle name either. Here are the dos and don'ts of choosing a blog title to give your new venture the headstart to success it deserves.

Do:

• Have your title match up with your domain. Don't buy a domain until you've come up with a blog title, because you're going to want to use your title as your domain. Doing so helps people remember both what your blog is called and how to find it, and greatly helps its ranking in searches. Speaking of which...
• Keep SEO in mind when selecting a title. When your blog is live you want people to find your content, and you want to be a leading source of news for whatever field it is you're writing about. Make sure your blog title says so and will help people interested in what you're writing about find what you have to offer. If you're writing a tech blog on a specific topic, such as the iPhone, you'll help yourself out greatly in the SEO department by including "Apple" or "iPhone" in your title.
• Make your blog title your brand. Your blog title sums up everything you're about in two to (at maximum) five words. Before diving into blogging, you should have already thought about a brand for your blog -- what it's all about, a mission statement, a constitution to live by dictating tone, what audience you're targeting, what cultural demographic you want to be a part of. Your title has to reflect all those sentiments at once.

Don't:

• Choose a title that is too similar to another blog's. Remember in 2nd grade when your class had five Katies and they all had to go by their last initials? Don't be Katie B, Katie D, or Katie F; be Alyssa or Summer. Choose a blog title that is still appropriate for your brand and what you're writing about but that stands out on its own.
• Make your title too long. Short and sweet is the name of the game, otherwise, it's too hard to remember and it'll make your domain name too long or become too confusing. Nicknames and shortening don't work either -- Josephs get called Joey when they want to be known as Joe. Pick one that's succinct, memorable, and gets the point across to begin with.
• Be too direct. So I know I've told you to keep it short and too the point and to include some SEO into the thought process, but don't call your Personal Finance blog "Personal Finance Blog." Honestly, it just makes your blog look lazy, demonstrates a lack of creativity, and spammy. Spice it up and show off your writing talents.