Interesting question. I see a lot of blogs with obscure names that are not connected in any way with either the author or the subject matter. I tend to switch off at that point as It seems to me that the author of the blog is just trying to demonstrate how clever s/he is rather than impart information that might be useful. I would say that the name of a blog should reflect the general subject area that it claims to provide information about or the name of the author, or the organisation, that is responsible for the blog content.

There is no harm in using your name for a blog if that is what you want to do. However, if you are blogging for credibility then you might want to have sub-names for the subject areas that you are blogging about. There are exceptions to this but they tend to be from well respected people or people who have defined goals and agendas. For example, you might want to see the blog written by Avinash Kaushik (www.kaushik.net/avinash) that is called Occam's Razor. It breaks 2 of my own rules, 1. it is a clever name and 2. it does not reflect the subject matter directly. You need to know what Occam's Razor is before you understand what the blog is about. However, Avinash is a clever guy and well respected in his field.

Naming convention is all about conveying the image that you want to convey and to get your information to the people that you want to have it without bothering those that either you don't want to have it or they don't want to receive it. Therefore, my view is that the best practice for naming a blog or personal website is to use a name that sends the right message.

Melinda Emerson

President, MFE Consulting, LLC

Posted on Feb. 6, 2011

I think the blog name should really be based on keywords. You should use the words people will use to find you in search engines. You can use your personal name as a three to one redirect so that you do not miss traffic searches of your name.

In my case, I also have a nickname online @Smallbizlady that is more popular than my name so I have a dot.com with a 301 redirect for that as well. Redirecting means redirecting from one url to another website, which allows you to capture all traffic. I have over 10 other urls pointing to my main site www.succeedasyourownboss.com

Here's another resource my blog post on how to build a small business blog http://succeedasyourownboss.com/09/2009/how-to-build-a-small-business-blog/

To your blogging success.

Melinda F. Emerson
@SmallBizLady
www.succeedasyourownboss.com

Douglas Millington

Certified Public Accountant, Douglas F Millington, CPA LLC

Posted on Feb. 5, 2011

Recommended by:
Cece Salomon-Lee

If you want to be found via Google, Bing or Yahoo your blog name ideally should be an exact keyword match for your content. This assumes you will get a unique domain for your blog. If your blog is a subdomain of an existing site you may still use a keyword but you should also consider using your name. It's all about getting found - do your keyword research - it will pay dividends for years to come.

Brent Chaters

Owner, Gab Monkey

Posted on Feb. 5, 2011

Philip has a great answer. I would add to this that anything memorable. If for example you use your own name, you get people to remember not just who you are but also your blog URL. Further you help build your own personal brand.

That said for my blog I decided to go with a more fun and playful name. It may work for or against me, by using Gab Monkey as my blog name, but I wanted to convey that the site is mostly random unfiltered thoughts, and the monkey because I use it to monkey around with code. Would anyone every know this? Probably not. Do I care? Not really. I didn't put the blog up to drive tons of traffic, like I said it got started because I wanted to experiment with code, and now it's sort of evolved into something I'm looking at more seriously. Perhaps I could have built another site with a more serious name, but I also like that the name doesn't keep me tied to one topic. If today I want to talk about SEO, and tomorrow I want to talk about Digital Marketing, and the next day about something I did in my personal life, I'm not tied into one subject matter.

Hopefully this gives you an idea of some insight to my thought process, as well as the natural evolution of the site. Ultimately I think choosing something that is simple and easy to remember, your name, a set of common words, something that is catchy, and something that is easy to spell.

Occam's Razor, is a very clever name, but I can see a variety of way someone would want to spell that. One other think using Avinash's site as an example. The domain doesn't match the blog name, which is also fine. So deciding on what to call your blog vs. a domain is a whole other discussion.