1. My main keyword is included in the domain name. I use this one the most, but that is changing a little. This can give a little boost in the engines.

2. The domain is available and already has traffic. Every day , thousands of domain names expire. People give up on their sites for various reasons.

A few of these are already listed in DMOZ or Yahoo, have links to them from other sites still on the web, so they already have some traffic coming to them.

And if you have a domain that is already listed in DMOZ or Yahoo, you have a head start on getting a good rankng in Google.

There are methods and services that that can track these for you.

3. The "easy to remember, easy to type" domain name. Don't underestimate the power of the "type in". If people can easily remember your domain name, they are more likely to type it in themselves, or even post in on forums, etc.

I go to google a lot. But I've never had it in my bookmarks. I type it in everytime...Because it's easy to remember and to type.

The first four letters are actually two letters, each repeated.
G-o-o-g

Two "g's" and two "o's".

Dombom.com is an example of this. With this site, my competition is internet marketers. I decided not to "bang heads" with them by getting a good search engine domain.

Instead, I'm hoping this is an easy name to remember and type and give me a slight traffic edge this way.

The name "dombom" ryhmes, it even ryhmes with the ".com".

It repeats "om" three times.

If you saw a list of marketing domain names, which stands out?

netmarketingsecrets.com
search-engines.com
promo-your-site.com
dombom.com
emailtipsandsecrets.com

Which one is the easiest to remember?

Which domains do you type in directly...I bet it's not the long ones.

I had a client that wanted an embroidery site. I picked the best "memory" domain I ever have...

wesew.com

It only uses five letters, but only three different letters, w, e, s.

It is spelled the same front to back. This makes it very, very easy for the human mind to remember.

And look at it on your keyboard, all three letters needed to type this domain are right next to each other!

If everything was equal, which would you type in:
wesew.com
-or-
sewing-supplies.com

Luckily, this client didn't want the domain name, so I kept it. One day, I'll get around to doing more with this domain.

4) The fourth and final reason I consider a domain name is that is a short, (meaining as few letters as possible) and hopefully contains a pronouncable word.

I stumbled onto this one a while back:
seedz.com

That's it...Just to point out there are things to consider when getting a new domain name.

None of the above is right for every situation. But also keep an open mind...You never know what may come your way.

And after all, isn't your domain name the abolute foundation of your site? You can change everything else about your site, but you can't change the domain name...

Please post your comments and additions below...Thanks.