I will not go into ‘how to pick the right domain name for your blog’. Just make sure that your domain name either specifies what your blog is about or is very catchy.

Don’t worry about picking an exact match domain name (a domain name that contains your targeted keyword). This is no longer an essential SEO strategy (it will not make any difference to search engines), and is not well-suited for blogs (since blogs target many keywords). Therefore, just go with something that will properly represent what you’re writing about.

To get more domain name ideas, head over to Namify.

Simply type your keyword, and the tool will generate lots of catchy domain ideas.

You will see a list of available domain names. Google says they do not differentiate domain extensions, meaning that to Google, it should make no difference if your domain name ends with a .com or .biz.

When you find your domain name, click on the Add button and go to Checkout. You will be offered to buy additional extensions at a discount price. Although it may be a good idea to protect your brand (prevent someone else from building a .net version of your blog tomorrow), this is not relevant at this point, and can be done at a later stage.

Another thing to point out is that you have the option of choosing to pay for one year of domain registration or up to 10 years. There are some indications that extended domain names (5 years or longer) reflect on SEO, and that Google takes this factor into account.

“Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain”.

Obviously, the length of your domain name registration will not have the same effect as some other SEO aspects, but if you have the money to invest – extending for 5 or 10 years will bring you less hassle with future extensions, prevent your domain name from being lost (forgetting to renew it), and bring you some SEO benefits.

Once you go through the payment process, you’re all done.