Google now checks the year your domain name was first registered.

This just makes sense. Those that care about their domain and their brand will register their domain for a long time. This demonstrates commitment. Of course it's not very hard for a spammer to do the same but the upfront costs are just that little bit higher and might help act as a deterrent. If anything a short domain registration period will be yet another flag in the Google system that will keep certain sites away from top rankings. Hopefully it will be the spammers that trigger the penalty when combined with all the other spam flags they trigger.

If you are anything like me and you like to register domains for an "idea" you have for the future there is no way you will be investing in a 10 year registration for something you may never pursue. An idea is an idea and I know half of the domains I buy amount to nothing. However buying the domain also signifies *some* commitment to the project and on many occasions is the motivational spark I need to get the website built and a new project off the ground. A one or two year registration is not a significant cost. Securing a domain for 10 years is. The easy workaround is to initially register a domain for the minimum period, if things take off then renew the domain for a longer period. Simple.

Google now places huge emphasis on links. They want to see a slow, gradual increase to the number of incoming links to your websites. Links need to have a variety of anchor text phrases. If all your anchor links are the same you could get de-listed or lose ranking position.

Ahh, natural linking patterns. I've mentioned this before - Google in many ways destroyed what it relies on to create such a great search engine. Before Google linking patterns were very natural, organic with sites linking to each other in many different ways, with different anchor text built up over a long period of time. Sites grew in popularity slowly and incoming links increased subsequently at similar rates of growth. Google stepped in and used these patterns in a ranking algorithm to accurately value sites. It worked, almost too well. Google became so popular that people began to study what it takes to rank highly. They learnt it was all about incoming links so they started an unnatural linking process, creating link farms and chasing incoming links with a vengeance.

Google wants natural linking back and will reward those sites that appear to be popular based on natural linking. This is not an exact science of course but if you do these things you are on the right track:

• Make sure your incoming links are not all carbon copies of the same keyword phrase. Vary the incoming anchor text with different phrases.

• Make sure you get links from many sites with varied PageRank. Assess link swaps based on the site (content, relevance) asking for the exchange, not solely on the green PR bar at the top of the site.

• Chase back links naturally, slowly increasing their number over time. If you go from 10 - 5000 backlinks in one month Google is going to think you are link farming and penalise you.

• Don't get paranoid. Stressing over why your site won't get listed and pressuring other sites for link exchanges can drive you crazy. Take it easy and work on building a great site slowly, tell the right people about it and they will spread the word for you.

Google is telling us that they look for relevant, quality content on your websites, which is no surprise, and that PageRank is a good indicator of a website's "authority" and relevancy.

The key term here is authority. Those sites that have been online for a long time with established authority in their field wield the power. One link from an authority site can boost you to the top of the rankings but take it away and you can just as easily fade to the bottom of the rankings. Again the emphasis here is on establishing links from many sites with various rankings. If you build an amazing site eventually the authority sites in your field may just link to you anyway and won't that make you feel special!

How do you build an authority site? With hard work of course. Authority sites don't appear out of nowhere, they build their authority over time by consistently working on quality content and audience creation. Don't expect overnight success, if you want a popular website you have to work at it for years, not weeks.