Why you Need a Custom Domain

If you’ve noticed, I shifted my other blog Food Corner, and this blog to custom domains recently. Earlier I used free BlogSpot blogs. Though I wanted to shift to a custom domain, I didn’t have much idea about that. On the other way, my free Blogspot blog ranked well and attracted good traffic daily. So I was scared of losing those things I earned hardly during more than 2 years of blogging. Anyway, after reading a lot, I understood that shifting to a blogger custom domain is not very difficult and it does not cost much money.

I never knew anything about domain name registration. This is why I spent more time on reading different blog posts about domain name registration and choosing a domain name provider. Those posts were really helpful for me to make a great decision. I never regret of buying custom domains for my blogs and I have many reasons for that.

Reasons for moving to a custom domain

Here are a few reasons which helped me to take the decision of moving my blog to a custom domain. If you still use a free blog, I think these reasons may help you to take a decision.

1) Your free blog can vanish anytime

This is the first and most important reason which made me change from Blogspot to a custom domain. Though I don’t violate any terms and conditions set up under Blogspot, my blog can be removed by google at any time for violation of its terms. (maybe for a reason of which I am not aware of). How would be the feelings if I cannot find my blog when I get up the next day? I know I can’t bear it. Once I found this reason, I quickly checked on how to shift to a custom domain. Other than this reason, below are some other benefits of using a custom domain for the blog.

2) Custom domains rank well in search engines and are good for SEO

Having your own custom domain will increase your website’s ranking in search results. You will gain good exposure in search engines, due to the fact that search engines like to index domains rather than subdomains like Blogspot, WordPress, etc. My recent posts such as this 3D2N Bintan Itinerary and 3D2N Batam Itinerary rank well in search engines bringing me more web traffic.

3) Give yourself a true web presence.

A custom domain is helpful to establish your brand as a blogger. It is easy to remember.
ex: yourbrand.com is short and memorable rather than having yourbrand.blogspot.com or yourbrand.wordpress.com etc

4) Easy to monetize the blog

If you plan to monetize your blog, it is better to have a custom domain. Most advertisers prefer a custom domain and don’t accept subdomains.

5) It is easy to afford a custom domain

It is cheap to buy a domain name for one year and mostly it costs around $10.If you are a less techy person like me, then you will be afraid of shifting to another domain because of other factors like losing content, subscribers, etc.

However, it is really easy to set up a custom domain through blogger. Blogger will host the custom domain for free and we only need to buy a domain name. Interestingly, blogger will re-direct all the previous posts in your old blog to a new custom domain. If you plan to buy a custom domain GoDaddy  is an option
Though there are other sites to buy a domain name, I used GoDaddy as it is one of the sites mentioned by google on their help page. There is a post about how to use a custom domain for the blog.

I hope the above information is useful if you decide to shift to a new custom domain. Wait for my next post on tips on selecting a domain name and how to set up the blog from blogger to Custom domain.

What is your idea about a custom domain? or still, you are in a free domain like Blogspot? Please leave a comment.