It’s time to forget the notion of starting a website by ranking it on Google once and for all. For years this method used to be the golden goose for Internet marketers. You throw together a site, not necessarily a good one, point some links its way using a desired anchor text and voilà, you have a ranking site that gets traffic and makes money.

Over the past year Google has fought a fierce battle against this manipulation, not without collateral damage of completely genuine sites getting hit. It’s become increasingly complicated to rank a new site, much less maintain a ranking for a length of time.