When my friend decided to have her own travel blog, I had to guide her through with choosing a domain name that would make her website more visible to search engines.

We made a shortlist of travel-related keywords for her domain name, while checking the web if they were already taken. Glad she heeded my advice and didn’t push through with her original suggestions. Thanks to techie bro for helping out with the domain registration and hosting. After finally having her website go live, my friend was very much excited to start writing although she claimed she suddenly got mental block!

For those who are thinking of building their home in the blogosphere with their own domains, better check out if the domain name you have in mind is still available. It’s easy to check whether a domain is taken or not, there are tools provided by most domain registrars where you can just input your preferred domain name and choose from .com, .net, .org, .info, .us and other domain extensions.

You’re lucky if your domain name is not yet taken, otherwise you need to brainstorm again for other keyword combinations that generally meet SEO (search engine optimization) rules and integrate them to your original preferred domain name. And once the name is available, register it ASAP, so somebody won’t beat you to it.

For newbies to website development, it’s good to read a bit about domain registration, webhosting and other related topics such as webhosting services, database, cpanel, backup, e-commerce and online marketing articles.