Google is rumored to use an algorithm, unofficially called the “Sandbox Algorithm” by SEO enthusiasts, that doesn’t allow most new domains to rank as highly as old ones, no matter the amount of optimization. Although the effect of this algorithm is still unproven, it is worth worrying about, just to be on the safe side. Most optimizers agree that the effect of this technique will last anywhere from 3 to 11 months, so it might make sense to set up a small temporary site a few months before getting the actual content online.

Don’t forget that every HTML element can be stylized by CSS. The H1 tag is given big importance by search engine spiders, but you might not like its default look. Just apply some stylization, and it can even be masked as normal inline text.

Choose your web hosting company carefully. Some of the things that may influence your SE ranking include:

1. Avoid free hosting, since search engines don’t regard it too well.
2. Make sure the IP address of your future server is static, meaning that it doesn’t change over time, since some engines don’t like it due to numerous technical problems it causes.
3. Don’t host with companies that host banned websites, such as spammers or pornography. Search engines might penalize, or ban you for being associated with such sites.
4. If you are seriously considering getting good search engine rankings, you need to have a private static IP. Your hosting company should provide you with this number, and you should be able to contact your site through it.

The main method of getting sites to link to you is called "reciprocal linking," or in normal words, link exchange, since this way both sites improve their link popularity. This process can be time consuming, and needs attention even after the deal is made. Here’re some examples of possible pitfalls:

1. A site might link back to you, but then get rid of the link, or move it to a different part on their site, that isn’t ranked as highly.

2. A webmaster might place a “rel=nofollow” attribute in his ling to you, which makes a spider ignore the link when crawling the page.

3. Your link might be placed on a link page that exists on the site’s server, but doesn’t have a link from the actual site to it. That way a spider is highly unlikely to reach it. And if it does, due to manual submitting for example, it will not give it a high rank, no matter how popular the main page is.

4. Some webmasters will point the link to a script on their page that will redirect to your site. Since spiders don’t read scripts, this link is useless SEO-wise.

5. When purchasing links, some sites will place the link on every page of their site. Google has recently begun ignoring such schemes.

So unless you remain watchful and monitor your links constantly, you risk increasing the other sites’ ranking, but not your own.

Both your domain name and your pages URLs are important to the search engine spiders, so try to use your keywords there. As a rule, use underscores, or better yet, hyphens to separate your keywords. While certain engines will not care whether the words are separated, some of the major ones, such as Google, do.

Last I heard; Google treats hyphens just like a person treats a space when reading. But it sounds like they pretty much don’t even register underscores - so hyphens are my seperator of choice.

Don’t use Flash graphics when it can be avoided. Navbars, static slideshows, and logos can usually be converted to SEO friendly images. If its usage is critical, put separate text links for search engine spiders, or make a complete text version of the site.

Don’t allow all your link partners to use the same anchor text. Google considers this similarity too artificial, and reduces its positive effect on your SERP rankings. If you can help it, encourage variety of the anchor text in your inbound links. Sending link exchange invitations, alter the wording of the site name or link text that you suggest.