Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I agree with laellester. I rarely get a link sending an email but I do get links if I call people first.

I would recommend majestic seo. It cost a few bucks but it catches missing links from OSE. Both are great tools.

We have used firms overseas for seo work and they are great. The only negative working with a company not in your time zone is when you need answers quick.  I really like using a seo company as more like financial advisor. We do most of the seo work but it is helpful to have someone agree or disagree with your efforts.

If you can hire someone internally and use great forums like seomoz may also be a great way of building a good seo person in house. In the long run it maybe cheaper.

We use hyphens and non-hyphen keywords for seo. We have used it for quite some time and we have seen no negative effects.

Here is an updated list from our nice friends.  http://www.seomoz.org/dp/seo-directory

I agree long forms are tough for people but I see yours is pretty short. I think I saw two locations on your home page for two areas to fill out the form.

I think you might want to write Free Contact Form and skip asking for the phone number. I think you make it not a requirement anyway. The second location for your form leads you to another page with locations but your contact form is all the way to the bottom. Really tough to find.

I

Tough decision but if the price of the website is affordable I would purchase it. You have to remember it is important to analyze the site and do research but your other competitors may pick up underneath you too. If it is in your budget it maybe best to buy it and hold onto it.

Tough call but I think I would pass on the 301 re-direct. If google doesn't like the links what advantages would it to add it. I would start fresh and build your new site with good quality links and forget all the bad ones from your old site.

In the US your website is not showing up as #1. You may have to log out of your google accounts and clear your history. I sometimes ask my friends to google my company to see their results because they never search my keywords. Good luck!

We have had great success running a facebook sweepstakes/promotions with www.sweptin.com. We increased our fans and had a lot more interactions. There a few companies that offer this type of service. just google facebook sweepstakes. When running these kinds of promotions you will have to do some marketing on your own end. Like sending out an email blast to customers/vendors and maybe doing a press release. good luck!

I would have to agree with Dimitar and say social media should be used as a way to engage your audience and create new networks. We try to use our social media to grow interest in our business and I also have found out increasing facebook fans have not helped in ranking so far.

I think it is very important to keep the post unique across your social media. I follow a lot of companies and the last thing I would like to read is the same post in your blog and your facebook wall. For a consumer I  enjoy reading unique content.

For seo purposes that unique content across social media is up for debate.

I have a few blogs and bots seem to be leaving most of my comments. Leaving some comments do offer some nice juicy links. I do like to read through the comments making sure my human friends are engaged with my site.

I would include at least one main blog to your site. Not only are you putting out fresh new content on your website but maybe one day you will have a huge following of people interested in what you say in your blog. Blogs are great in helping your potential clients but sometimes really fun to read.

I found a pretty basic SEO book called SEO secrets by Danny Dover. Gives you basic ideas and terminology. Sometimes it is nice to read a book. Old school but I still like reading my newspaper that has been printed.

I believe the link directories are fine within reason. Don't rely only on link directories but submitting to them I have found did any harm. I think if you have a good mix of link directories and natural links you will be fine. I would avoid low page rank directories.

I have a friend in the SEO community and he  tried getting some bulk links for his site and it did more than good. When testing this strategy he saw his site drop from the first page of google to the fourth page. It took him nearly half a year to get his site back on page one of google.

If you are worried about competitors adding bad links to your site than I think the best strategy is to get the best natural back links to combat the bad ones.

I would stick to one internal blog instead of focusing on two. I have tried it before and writing blogs and getting links is super time consuming for even one site. I would put my best effort on one site and give it a 100% effort.

If you ask the question that it may do more harm than it probably is not worth it. I think if you can do it yourself, I would take your time and do it yourself (not worth the risk).

Sometimes OSE cannot pick up all the links like Shelly mention. To double check to see if google has picked up on your links. I usually set a google alert in my email for the exact term I was targeting. You will most likely see your PRWEB link when google does their crawl but pick up some helpful links and news what your competitors are doing at the same time.