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I use PRWeb.com and opt for the premium service ($360 per release - or you can get a Vocus (PRWeb's parent company) business plan if you send out releases frequently - good savings. I also don't abuse the various options you can set up with each release for SEO but instead choose the ones that make the most sense for proper relevance. Ideally, if you have the resources and budget to afford it, yes, it's best to work on making real connections with actual editorial desks at various channels and organizations, because that's where the golden nuggets are that will most likely lead to coverage.

Rule #1: A company MUST be 110% committed to the resources for content. Rule#2: Inbound content traffic is the weakest form of traffic from a conversion perspective. Rule#3: Because of Rule #2, you must change the process in which you convert. Most of my clients are smaller ecommerce sites. While content is king, and content marketing drives traffic, remember what we learned about SEO that took 15 years to figure out: It's not just about traffic. Basically, I convert my client's funnels from a click-->conversion process to a click-->lead acquisition-->lead nurture-->conversion process.  Content is a great way to acquire leads, even if your site is an ecommerce site and regardless if it is B2B or B2C or its size. This means you need to integrate all your promotional tactics into a comprehensive plan that marries SEO, content, email, and ecommerce into one, unified program. Let's define a lead as an email address for now. A few ideas to generate leads from content: Offers - About the best way to get anyone's attention. Consider a free download or a coupon that you need to be sent via email. FREE is good. Comments - I am always asked what is the best commenting system. My response is ALWAYS the one that allows you to own the community. So, comment systems like disqus,etc, I ignore. They are GREAT from a community standpoint, but you can't capture the email address from the person leaving the comment. So, KISS, and make sure that you can acquire the commentors email address. Free Subscriptions to content Now that you have their email address, you can create campaigns that strenghten your value propositions and get people into a buying state of mind. Then, go for the kill and ask for the sale! Convert! Best, Guy P.S. Side Note: IMO, gone are the days that you treat each tactic as its own silo. They need to be fully integrated with each other in order for your marketing to convert.

Set up on the new server the identical site and test it works. You can usually preview the site via the ip or change your hostsfile on your computer so when you enter the web address it takes you to your new ip (but the rest of the world see's your old site still). Get it all up and stable, check everything. All you need to do then is change the dns to point to the new server. If you have a systems admin you can get them to change the ttl a few days before to a smaller number so that the dns transition is picked up more quickly around the world. Some important rules: Don't do it on a Friday as you might need to roll back something if it goes wrong and you may need support staff who could be unavailable on a weekend. Give yourself plenty of time. More than you think Don't forget to update any email dns settings etc Make sure everyone is aware email might be delayed while dns is transitioning check your dns transition across the globe here http://www.whatsmydns.net/ Don't switch off you old hosting for at least a few days maybe a week. Some websites may still be reading your old ip address and you never know you might need to do an urgent roll back to the old server if something nasty happens. If you need a systems admin who can do this all for you I can heartidly recommend mine.

I would definitely include free shipping on all your items and promote this heavily on your homepage (along with the price). Here's two articles (old data I know) I found from one of my favourite ecommerce blogs: http://www.getelastic.com/free-shipping-vs-discount/ http://www.getelastic.com/promote-free-shipping/ Bottom line is this is something you should really test and do significant research on, but I think most people would agree that you should go down this path. Cheers

As far as I'm concerned, gone are the days of requesting anchor text and, one step further, outright requesting links. Bloggers aren't living under a rock, they're hip to the SEO game. Requesting links in outreach emails is a bad tactic for several reasons, the main reason being it gives the blogger the impression that you could care less about what they actually think of the product and are only interested in the link. The 'ask' section of my blogger outreach emails therefore never include link requests.