Is there any guideline for a good domain name? How many character? Usage of hypen, how many words, etc
I would say forget about hyphens and keywords. If you want to build something serious, get a brandable and easily remembered name. Prefer a .com, short if possible, but a one sounding good
KISS Keep it short and simple. A .com unless you are specifically targetting a country when the tld of the country is well recognised- .co.uk for example Pronouncable/ brandable. Keywords are important, but do not overdo it
agree with the others... i keep a simple "guideline" here > http://www.domainloot.com/domainregistrationtips.html GOOD LUCK.
However guidelines are just an orientation, otherwise people would not register crappy names. Depends on what you need a doman for, resell it? develop it? Based on this no guidelines may apply when you go to create your own internet identity
Just my 2 cents: Any domain name can be developed for any niche. The question is how much time and effort do you want to put in to it. My preference would be to use a brandable domain, or what I call a "concept domain". Not to say that a good keyword domain is bad, but I am a domain reseller first and a developer last in this industry. Most of my clients start out with a list of keywords and want a domain using them. What I do is take their list and think of a concept domain. I will use my recent idea as an example. It is not for sale. But lets say they are looking to start a comic strip website. They are looking for comicstriplive.com or something smilar.They know it needs to be dark but humourous at the same time. I think a concept, image or something that sparks interest in my usually dormant brain. So I come up with a character. His name is Dracubat. The ideas now roll around in my head for a moment and in no time, i have a concept. Toss up a blog, create a few images and the presentation is ready. The key here is to take them to the concept level rather than the keyword level that was originally brought to you. If I can do that, then the open domain availablility has just become much more open. Two recent domains purchased were layconcrete.com and Ruffie.com. I will toss an idea up live and start marketing it to concrete related businesses and as for Ruffie.com, I thought to submit it to garbage, sandwich, paper bag companies just to start with. Sorry for the long post but my final point is that 67% of my domain sales are brandable domains. They also account for 76% of total profits. Dracubat