Jul 30 2007

Is the title of your blog reflective of your content?

I have written a couple of posts making fun of software titles that give no clue as to what the software does. eg Pando, Chirp? Any ideas what you might do with them?

I have also found a bit of resistance to the title of my blog, (the perceived disgustingness of the innocuous word Pisstakers being too much for some to mention, let alone visit.)

And finally, I was reading some SEO info about whether a domain name helps with search engine rankings. The upshot being that indirectlly, a cool and relevant domain name does help Google rank your blog.

So all in all, it got me thinking, is the title of your blog reflective of your content, and is the name aiding or abetting your attempts to build a brand? You are building a brand, right?

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    1. Jon Lee said:

      I’ve heard that the domain name reflects your rankings as well. As for my own blog, I’m not really branding it, I’m actually branding myself!

      July 30th, 2007 at 10:38 am
    2. Carolyn said:

      I would like to think it does. Granted, the name was born long before I had ever heard or concerned myself with the words branding,SEO, page ranking or paid blogging. It was created when blogging was for the pure and simpliestic reason of just expressing myself, capturing my days and creativeness, and to share it with friends and family.

      The title — A Prairie View — I’m from Kansas. You can’t get any more “prairie” than that. And “view” — my blog is a reflection of my life, a “view” to others of what I think and feel.

      My blog has taken a drastic turn from the way it was a year ago, without compromising who I am. Instead of long posts with many paragraphs, I break my day up into lots of little posts, to fulfill the TOS of the paid to blog companies. But I still write from the heart, I still pull life experiences into the paid entries and it still falls into the “view” category and branding.

      July 30th, 2007 at 10:57 am
    3. chrisblogging.com said:

      I think that this is an area that a lot of bloggers overlook; nice post!

      July 30th, 2007 at 11:05 am
    4. Sam said:

      I have a bit of a problem in this area. My blog’s title USED to reflect the content of my blog, but my life changed, and the blog content changed with it. I’m not sure if title-changing is better or worse than having a title vs. content conflict.

      July 30th, 2007 at 11:15 am
    5. Malin said:

      If I only knew what I know now of branding and etc I would have chosen a different domain name and title for my site. I mean, “infektia” doesn’t really relate to anything at all. I could buy a new one, but the energy of building up a pagerank 5 (as infektia currently is) website is lacking.

      July 30th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
    6. Angela said:

      Since I do write a lot of stuff about Boston, my blog’s title doesn’t hurt. Personally, I hate the domain but I’ve had it so long, I can’t bear to part with it now.

      July 30th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
    7. mercutiom said:

      Vanessa Fox just posted some great info on her blog about just this topic. Basically she says that the domain name is important, but only if it’s relevant to the content as well. I strongly suggest anyone interested in this read it. http://www.vanessafoxnude.com (and no…there are no pictures, pervs.)

      July 30th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
    8. Chris said:

      “and no…there are no pictures, pervs”

      My mouse was poised and ready to click….

      July 31st, 2007 at 9:56 am
    9. Ed the Editor said:

      @Jon – you are doing a good job of branding if your webstats are any indication.

      @Carolyn – I did a series of blog interrogations and most people wouldn’t consider a change of name whatever happened. Blogs are personal by their nature, and people change over time so it is understandable that most of us will stick with the original name.

      @Chrisblogging – thanks, you have impeccable taste.

      @Malin – If a site is PR5 why try to fix what isnt exactly broken?

      @Chris – you wrote what everyone else was thinking.

      July 31st, 2007 at 10:32 am
    10. Malin said:

      @Ed the Editor: Good point!

      July 31st, 2007 at 2:46 pm
    11. Mark said:

      It’s paradise when you have a blog’s name be reflective of your content – absolutely! But I don’t think it’s necessarily harmful to have them be disconnected in a way.

      In truth, my blog’s name, MeAndMyDrum most likely conjures up thoughts of, oh, I don’t know…drums! But it’s nothing of the sort. When you get to my blog though and read a little about it, I think the meaning of the name becomes clear in that it’s a way for me to send out information and making its presence known — like banging a drum.

      Take, for example, Yahoo!. Where would they be if they weren’t so good at branding?

      July 31st, 2007 at 10:24 pm
    12. Ed the Editor said:

      My understanding is that building a brand on an international scale is one of the biggest challenges in business, period. I dont know the origins of Yahoo but I suspect they wouldnt have a brand if they didnt spend millions on developing it. I imagine they had a harder time / needed more resources than International Business machines to plant themselves in people’s minds to the degree that you can say “Yahoo, they do…”

      Without millions to invest, bloggers need every little advantage to be recognised all over the internet ie a name and domain that at least gets people on the right track without too much thinking has to be a way to go, I think.

      MeAndMyDrum seems to me to be a good example of a thought provoking or sticky name that would register in your mind. Whether the masses are savvy enough to associate it with bang /beat my drum and what that entails, I dont know. But if they do, you saved yourself a lot of money!

      August 1st, 2007 at 2:42 am

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