Thursday 12 January 2012

Topic Is Decided…Now To Find A Great Name For My New Blog?

I have pretty much narrowed down my possible blog topic choices to being organised and education.  After some thinking about both of these, I realised that I can’t really get very excited about writing about being organised.  I think for me, this could only go so far before I got bored of it.  Deep down I already knew before my last post that I wanted my new blog to be on education, but I thought it was definitely worthwhile thinking of other possibilities.

I’ve started reading through the various posts about setting up my blog and one I’ve come across early on is finding a great domain name.  There are a few things that I should keep in mind:

Length: I think generally the shorter the better (easier to remember), but longer names shouldn’t be ruled out if they’re good. 

Use of Keywords in name: I’m not overly familiar with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and all the other jargon that goes with ranking in search engines.  But I think my name will probably be semi-branded.  This is when you embed a keyword in a brand name.

.com vs .net etc.: The post I’m reading recommends .com being best because of convention and online expectations.  But if I want to reach a local audience as well (and I’m not sure if I want to register a business down the track if it matters what suffix I use) then maybe .com.au would also be worthwhile having.  Maybe I should look at acquiring both?

Things to Avoid: Numbers, difficult to spell words, hyphens and letter jumbles (do the letters from one word jumble into the next)

Okay so I’ve got a few rules to consider when choosing a name.  Next I need to do some brainstorming to narrow down the possibilities.

Step 1: develop a list of words and phrases related to my topic.  List potential brand names:
  • Education, educational, instruction, instructional, knowledge, intelligence, curriculum, lesson plans
  • Teach, teaching, teachers, learn, learning, learners
Step 2: add helper words.  This is adding short non topic related words that might be a good add on to the brand words.
  • Expert, whiz, master, leader, authority
  • Hotspot, hive, store, village, community
I might need help with this Step, any suggestions?

Step 3: Search for domains with combinations of my words.  The suggestion is to use Bust a Name to find available domains, but it doesn’t search for any .com.au domains, only .com, .net, .org etc.  Some of the ones using my combinations above include:
  • Hotspoteducation.net
  • Educationhotspot.net
  • Hotlesson.com
  • Lessonhive.com
The list is so extensive, it’s somewhat overwhelming…mmmmm this is difficult.  Do you have any suggestions on how to make this not seem so hard?  Maybe it’s best to just go with a bunch of names that I like and seem catchy and then see if they are available.

If you have any tips for me or any name ideas then I’m all ears J

4 comments:

  1. lesson-plans-online.com
    one-lesson-at-a-time.com
    me-and-my-lesson-plans.com

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for the suggestions. The first two domain names are taken if I wanted them without the hyphen, but are available with. However, I think that could be difficult for people to remember. The third suggestion is available as both .com and .com.au, so I will add that to my list of possibilities. On the list so far with both .com and .com.au available are:

      Hot spot education
      Me and my lesson plans
      The teachers tray
      Education project
      Innovative lesson plans
      Click a lesson plan

      The other ones I suggested within this post are not available as .com, but rather .net, so I don’t think I’ll go with those.

      If you have any other suggestions please leave a comment to let me know!

      Delete
  2. The teacher's tray has a nice ring to it. Hot spot education is also a good one, as is education project. In fact, having the word 'education' in your address is probably the way to go.

    You don't want to 'pigeonhole' yourself and be limited to only lesson plans, as the others suggest. It's great for you to start with a focus on lesson plans, but who knows where this may take you? Aim for the stars Ms Crean!

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    Replies
    1. Haha I’m always aiming for the stars Mrs Moore! Yes I did quite like the teacher’s tray, but am still not entirely convinced. I agree about the lesson plans and not having that in the title. I’m not sure what keyword is best to use in the title as I’m not really sure how the whole key word thing works. Do you think it would be better to have education or teaching/teacher?

      Delete

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