1) Register your domains for 2-5 years, not 1 year.
2) Avoid buying domains with multiple dashes
3) Do begin to obtain RELEVANT links from high authority pages and directories as soon as possible for both new and old sites
4) Beware who you link out to and do not participate in link exchanges with non-related content sites
5)Standard onpage SEO is enough (title tags with keywords, h1 for heading, static url, proper internal link structure, sitemap, deep content, article content focusing on the search tail and funnel pagerank back up to category pages).
6) Do have a long term SEO and content plan. Long term unique valuable content will always beat out spam in the long run.