If you set up a blog on these platforms, you have a quick way of “testing” the waters whether you have the patience, acumen, and creativity to blog. Now I am not stating that you have to be professional publisher to start and keep up a blog.

Make note, though, that when you set up blogs on these free platforms, you run the risk of having no control of it because the blog host can delete your blog for any reason they see fit. Although I can’t state a specific instance of how your blog on these platsforms can get deleted, the most common one is if you violate the “terms of service” of the way you use the blog. Some free blog platforms do not allow you to sell products or services from the blog. Other platforms do not allow you to slander or libel other bloggers, people or organizations.

I can’t stress enough the value of being able to “test drive” the blogging process if you do set up blogs there. I would suggest that you blog, for a while on the free platform when starting out, just to get experience if you want to learn on your own. Then, when you get fairly comfortable, you can set up a “paid for” blog and take it seriously into the future.

What is a “paid for” blog system? Simply, it is a way where you buy your own domain name, “rent” webhosting, and download the blog software to the webhost. Domain names nornally cost about $10 and monthly webhosting costs as low as $5 per month. But the benefits are huge. You can sell products or services, and you can just about do anything you want on your own blogging platform that is legal and moral.

Since you control both the domain name and webhosting, there is little chance of being “shut down” from outside sources.

1) Make sure words within the domain name is relavent to the industry or niche that you are in. Search engines are going to “look over” your domain first to figure out where to place you in the search engine category and ranking.

For instance, if you are in the dog training business, your domain could be www . dog training tips . com

The search engines will look at each word for placement in the ranking system.

2) Make sure the name is “catchy” so people can easily remember the name. From a marketing standpoint, this is key to get out of the starting gate with a new blog.

3) Try to go for a short domain name. Nobody is going to remember a very long URL. It’s not going to “fit” in your business card! But seriously, a shorter domain name has proven to be more effective from a marketing standpoint.

If you follow these three key tips, your will have optimized your domain name for maximum marketing effect.

Beware of the domain “squatters” who are monitoring your domain name searches too. Once you input a possible domain name to purchase through a well know domain company, they purchase it if you do nothing to buy it in a day or so. If they find that they can get some serious money in “selling” it back to you, then are you literally held “captive” to buy from that company.

So when looking for a domain, make sure you can purchase it soon after you see it available if you feel it is the best choice for now. That way, you have peace of mind and you can start planning your website based around the name.

Deciding on a domain name is quite a simple process. First, you must make sure the domain name has your key word inside it that deals with your core business. Since our business deals with blogs and helping to market them, it was a natural to get our domain name, “Blog Marketing Experts.” It should be easy to remember. We have a recent post in which we let you in on some tools to help choose your domain name.

Next to posting relavent and exciting content in your blog, your domain name is the next best thing to help make your business blog a success.

First of all, you need to have a memorable domain name. In a perfect world, it should have a keyword or phrase of the type of industry your business is in. At the same time, it should be a short domain name. So there is a challenge of getting the right domain name, but you certainly can get some assistance here by going to a domain name suggestion site.

Here are some sites that can help you generate your own unique domain name:

1. www.makewords.com
2. www.shoutdomains.com
3. www.nametumbler.com

When a search engine looks at your blog, the first thing it will index is your domain name. The following things the search engines look for is meta tags, blog title, H1 and H2 tags, caption descriptions of your photos or videos, category words and phrases, and lastly the content in your posts. You can see, that if you give attention to all these items simultaneously, you will generate more visitor traffic to your site and therefore more leads that turn into paying customers.