The next step in the ‘how to make a blog” series is choosing the best domain name and hosting for your blog.
There’s a lot of research you should have done before you reached this point:
- Conducted keyword research
- Looked for affiliate and digital products you can promote
Plus you need to have thought about the subjects and content of at least 10 articles using keywords from your research.
Choosing a Search Engine-Friendly Domain Name
With domain names we start to get into the wonderful world of search engine optimization (SEO).
I own quite a lot of domain names and they are registered with several different companies.
Each month I get email reminders to renew the registration.
Recently I received one which looked like this:
I thought, “Not seen one like this before”. It looked genuine enough. It had all my correct details…meaning I did own the domain name and it was due for renewal.
Then I saw the cost – up to $999 for life registration.
I thought, “Wow. That cannot be right”.
The domain industry is gigantic and massively lucrative, with ultra-relevant domains seemingly always bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars for their owners.
From ultra-memorable short domain names to incredibly targeted shopping terms, the value of a good domain is well established, and any smart online marketer knows how important it is to find a domain name that sells your business for you.
For bloggers, things can be a little more complicated. Picking a name for your blog is often less about driving direct ‘buyer’ traffic and much more about summing up and explaining your content.
Yesterday I wrote a blog post entitled “How to make a blog stand out with brilliant blog posts”
Within that post, I spoke about sharing some stories about yourself to make your blog stand out and be different to all the other hundreds out there.
Last night I was talking with a client with regards to adding videos to blog posts.
The conversation and the blog post reminded me of a video a friend created of me a couple of years ago.
I’m not saying this is a brilliant blog post…but what talent do you have other than blogging?
Last Friday, I experienced something new.
For one of my sites, www.thedigitalarchives.com for a particular phrase I was targeting, I hit the number one spot in Google.
When I start a new blog or create a new product, I target 6 keywords.
Why six?
That’s what the traffic getting guru, Jeff Johnson recommends. So, I followed suit.
Jeff actually recommends 6 – 8, and I start with 6.
So how do you decide what six keyword phrases you are going to target?
And which one should be your primary keyword? i.e. the keyword that you think is the best out of the six.
WordPress Themes from just $10
Have you decided to host your own WordPress blog?
I hope so because that means using a WordPress theme from WordPress.com no longer restricts you.
So you moved away from a WordPress hosted blog and theme and now you have your own domain name and hosting and you just cannot wait to get started – you want to start blogging and share with the world all your knowledge
But just hold on…pull in the reigns just a little.
Back on 5 June this year, I received a text from a friend whose website I had built. The text said:
“A friend of mine wants a website, can she ring you to discuss?”
“Of course, simply give her my number”, I texted back.
Ten minutes later my phone rang. The prospective client was ringing.
We discussed what she wanted and during the conversation I discovered that this new client already had a website set up by one of these ‘free web-site’ companies but she couldn’t remember who and didn’t have the details.
Alarm bells started to ring!
The FREE Guide
Well, at last I’ve done it!
I’ve finally created a guide that shows you the exact steps you have to take to make your own blog. Right from deciding upon a domain name through to adding blog posts (and with many steps in-between) – it’s all in this free guide.
It took me a little while to create because I’ve added lots of screen images and links to videos but I certainly enjoyed creating it.
I hope you enjoy reading and using it as much as I did creating it!
Hi, Andrew Rondeau here and this blog, my blog, will not lie to you. I will give it to you straight.This blog is about blogging, the Internet and sharing my experiences and advice on 
