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Stephan Spencer wrote an article on how to avoid buying a sucky domain for CNet’s News Blog. Some of his tips are quite obvious, especially to experienced domain buyers, but I think the article is a good guideline for small businesses that are going to buy a new domain for their website.

Spencer suggests, for example, to do some keyword research and to use the proper top-level-domain.

Top-level domain: Choose the proper top-level domain (.com, .net, .org, .info, and so on). If your business is in the United States, then you should use .com as your domain. While there is nothing wrong with .net and .org domains, they are not perceived as being as “professional” as .com domains. The .org domain is still perceived as nonprofit. Sometimes that is a positive though–such as for my blog ChangesForGood.org, because in that case I wanted to distance the blog from any commercial interests. Top-level domains like .info and .biz are often associated, rightly or wrongly, with spammers.
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Site age (if a used URL): Run the URL through The Wayback Machine. Make sure there aren’t any previous associations with pornography, hate or violence. If there are, avoid the domain.
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Relevancy: Make sure your domain name is relevant to your business. Don’t buy a URL because it sounds cool or it has personal merit. Buy it because it has direct, focused keyword relevance to you business.

These are just three of the eleven tips he gives: Keyword research, Linkability, Top-level domain, Used URLs, Site age, Back links, Blacklists check, Relevancy, URL length, Potential for legal conflict, and Double meaning.

I would like to add that you should check whether the domain is likely to receive direct navigation traffic. You can do this, for instance, by typing the domain (with extension) into Overture’s keyword suggestion tool.

Another advice I can give is that you should buy possible variations of your main domain to make it easier for people to find your website. For example, if your company name is Joe’s Burgers and your main domain is JoesBurgers.com you should also buy the singular version JoesBurger.com, the hyphenated version Joes-Burgers.com, JoeBurger(s).com, and, if your budget is big enough, a generic domain like BurgerJoint.com or Burgers.com, or a local domain, such as SanFranciscoBurgers.com if that is where you are located. In general, the more domains you own the more people will visit your website, so buy as many domains as possible (as long as they make sense and are related to your business, of course) and don’t forget to buy domains under popular TLDs other than .com, too.

Link: Eleven steps to buying a domain name that doesn’t suck