Pros and Cons of changing your blog’s name

Here are a couple of pros and cons of changing your blog’s name. These are general ones that I thought of, but I would encourage you to make your own list!

Pros

• You have the opportunity to re-brand yourself.
• Going through a change is fun and exciting!
• You can pick an original name that you can ensure no one else has. This is a great opportunity if your current name is really common.
• Changing your name might make you feel better and more confident about your blog, especially if you really don’t like your current one.

Cons

• Changing your blog name might confuse some of your readers.
• If you don’t set up a 301 redirect correctly, people could still try to visit your old blog and have trouble finding your new one (this is not a problem if you set up a 301 redirect correctly).
• Until your new name gets reestablished, people might not know who you are. You lose your established online presence.
• You will have to update all your publisher and author contacts with your new URL and blog name so that they know who you are.
• If your review has been quoted in a book or on a site anywhere, you lose that connection to your blog, since it will be under the old name.
• You will be unable to change your Facebook page name. You can change the URL but not the name of the actual page. You will either have to create a new one (and lose followers) or live with the fact that the URL doesn’t match your name.

As you can see, there are a few more cons than pros. But it’s up to you to decide for yourself if the pros outweigh all the cons (for me they did!). I personally think that in the short run changing your name kind of sucks. You lose followers, people are confused, etc. But in the long run it will all pay off and you will be a happier blogger! So if you’re in this for the long run, then the change might be worth it.