Welcome to the Q&A Forum

WarriorForum, like any other forum, is only as good as the member that is contributing.  Once you're around any forum for long enough, you start to get a sense of who the reputable, intelligent, and honest members are.  Members with lots of reputation points are usually a bit more trustworthy than newer members, or members with negative reputations.

The Q&A forum you're on right now is, in my opinion, one of the best remaining places on the Internet to ask questions and engage in discussions related to SEO.  These parts are policed way more than most forums, and in my opinion, the intelligence level of the average member is much higher than some of the other forums out there.

I also really like SEOChat, but the quality of that forum has admittedly declined over the last few years - in particular, I see EGOL and JV Rudnick posting more on the SEOmoz Q&A than SEOChat, and they were always dishing out some of the most valuable advice.  So...you might just be in the right place.

I couldn't find it anywhere in the settings.  I believe you just have to start a new campaigns.  They're going to have to re-crawl everything, but they have a starter crawl that works pretty fast nowadays, so you can get going somewhat quickly.

I don't really do any formal reciprocal link exchanges via e-mail, but I do have a ton of success with the following method:

1.) Write a great blog post or piece of content for your own website.  Include in it links to other great blogs or resources about the topic you're writing about.

2. When the post is published, Tweet at the people whose websites you linked to and let them know that you mentioned their amazing, helpful resource in your latest post.

3. This generates a TON of retweets, and once in a while a great link back to my website from the blog/website that I mentioned.  It also helps me establish a line of communication with authoritative figures in my industry.  In short order, it puts me on their map, making future link requests much easier.

I know this isn't exactly what you're looking for, but I thought you might find it interesting.  Just my $0.02!

Trustworthy paid directories are a small part of a linkbuilding campaign, but I wouldn't necessarily discourage them.  The more trusted ones, such as Yahoo, Business.com, Best of the Web, BBB OnLine, and JoeAnt, aren't bad links to have by any means.  If you have the budget to make it happen, go for it.  If not, don't fret - just keep building great quality links from authoritative domains, and you'll outrank your competitor eventually.

Also, definitely heed the advice of the other posters and make sure that your on-site SEO is up to par.  That can certainly be what's holding you back.

Open Site Explorer is the tool you are looking for.  Generally, you want to seek out links from websites/pages that are relevant to your niche and have a strong Domain/Page Authority, which is a reflection of the strength and diversity of their inbound link profile.  The more authoritative the page or domain, the stronger the link.

As for determining if a website is low quality (beyond SEOmoz authority metrics), you can use Open Site Explorer dive into the target website's backlinks.  You should also obviously view the website and see if it passes a quick human review - is the website well organized, filled with high quality content, and well designed?  If a website's strongest links appear spammy or their on-site tactics appear to be anything less than clean, you might want to consider moving on to the next opportunity.

In general, though, don't fret too much about making sure that each and every link opportunity presented to you is 100% clean.  It is highly, highly unlikely that your website will ever be negatively impacted by an external link; even the most manipulative link tactics are usually just ignored by Google.  Focus on keeping your on-site tactics clean and making sure that any external links ON your website are to good neighborhoods.  Moreover, focus on building links with websites that have strong followings or large communities around them - don't forget, referral traffic can be every bit as powerful as organic search traffic.

The Official Google Webmaster Blog published a great post last year about getting quality links to your site.  It may be worth the read.

In short, yes.

Don't get me wrong.  It is perfectly fine to publish press releases on your website.  Google isn't going to lose trust in your website from selected content that might be syndicated elsewhere.  Give them a little credit.  Google certainly recognizes that press releases, however boring and uninspired, make up a necessary part of how companies communicate, and thus a necessary segment of content on the web.  Their algorithm, for all of its faults, is not completely without common sense.  Moreover, having selected content on your website that is duplicated elsewhere isn't necessarily a dealbreaker.  Google, particularly with Panda, seems to evaluate the trust of your website as a sitewide sort of factor, and a couple pieces of duplicate content aren't necessarily going to mess up your day.

But if press releases do make up a significant portion of the content on your website, I would say you're definitely at risk.  Google will learn that your website isn't dishing out unique content, and they'll trust your website less because of it.  Moreover, press releases aren't exactly the world's best type content, even if they are completely original and don't exist elsewhere on the internet.  The fact is that there are much better opportunities to create original, engaging, and shareable content, and taking advantage of those opportunities will help your SEO efforts much more than any amount of press releases you could possibly publish.