I am trying to get a handle on this google rank thing and there are many many resources on the web which frankly I have no idea how accurate they are.

Anyone here can recommend good resources for search engine optimization in particular. I am, like anyone else on the web, very interested in boosting my site's google rank.

Thanks in advance.

Here's some interesting info:

http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/6-10-2005-71368.asp

One of our clients was ready to spend over $50,000/year paying an SEO company to do work for them. Rip off big time....

I can second the length of time for registered domains. I have had my site registered for several years now, and I find that pretty much anything I post now is ranked in the top 10 of Google a few days later. In fact, one of those posts - about a "Golden Warthog" in the game Halo2 - has consistantly been my bigest referrer for well over 3 months now.

I don't do anything special, so I think that it plays quite a large role in it. For now. :)

There's a market for established corporations because banks prefer corporations that have been established for a while. I wonder if there's a market for domains being transferred in a similar fashion.