According to several seismic design standards, a ground motion time history should be selected similar to the design response spectrum, or a ground motion time history should be modified by matching procedure to the design response spectrum through the time-domain method. For the response spectrum matching procedure, appropriate seed ground motions need to be selected to maintain recorded earthquake accelerogram characteristics. However, there are no specific criteria for selecting the seed ground motions for applying this methodology. In this study, the characteristics of ground motion time histories between seed motions and spectral matched motions were compared. Intensity measures used in the design were compared, and their change by spectral matching procedure was quantified. In addition, the seed ground motion sets were determined according to the response spectrum shape, and these sets analyzed the response of nonlinear and equivalent linear single degrees of freedom systems to present the seed motion selection conditions for spectral matching. As a result, several considerations for applying the time domain spectral matching method were presented.