Have you considered using a captcha program?  I assume there's a cost involved to get that setup . . . I've never really looked into it.

Jeez  . . . how sad/dedicated are we lurking on SEOMoz on Memorial Day . .. .

I don't think it does anything other than send me a response via email, but I will check with the designer to make sure it is not allowing anything.  It has a section for "comments", but that's just so they can clarify the quote info to me.

Ha!  Somehow I don't think my site has garnered that level of interest from Google yet . . .

I get a lot of form submissions through my website that are clearly not actual people (unless they are insane . .  ).  It fills out stuff nonsensically, has an email address, and usually some stupid snippet of text that makes no sense.

Does anyone know why people do this?  Clearly there can't be any SEO benefit to submitting to someones web form.

I guess if I added a "captcha" option it would put a stop to this . .

To give some perspective, the competitors I am dealing with have maybe a couple hundred external followed links . . . but only NINE linking domains.  As far as I can see, most of their external links are actually different versions of THEIR OWN website!

I'm just thinking a boatload of external links with a wide variety of sources would pretty easily get me leapfrogging these guys.  Obviously, elbow grease on forums, individual posts on PR sites manually and such will accomplish the same thing . . . but there is certainly appeal to only having to focus on creating good source material as opposed to worrying about how to distribute it as well (I'm less the SEO guy than the marketing guy . . . SEO is just becoming part of my job description!).

OK, I read a previous thread about whether people found press release sites useful (specifically I am considering a reputable pay for release service).

I understand the knock on press releases in this digital age (namely that no one reads them and arguably never did . . . ), but I was interested in moving the discussion in a different direction . . .

Do press releases services really help a sites performance based on increased backlinking?  Is there a SEO benefit to PR services?

My company is a local print company.  I've done quite a bit of research on my local competitors, and specifically for a couple products we would like to dominate.  The good news is that it looks like the hurdle would not be terribly high to really take over the web presence with a well planned and executed website/SEO campaign.

My inclination is that for a relatively small company like mine (dealing with relatively small competitors) it WOULD benefit me to pay for the sheer number of backlinks a PR program would generate.

The monthly cost is frankly about the same as the cost of this site, which OF COURSE I get value from (hey moderator, how about a couple extra MOZ points for that one!)

Specifically, I am looking at this for myself, but feel free to expand the question to the broader topic.

Thanks everyone, very helpful!  I DO have the toolbar, and now I know how to use it!  

My head is swimming learning all this stuff!

I'm a little new to SEO, so maybe this is obvious to some . . .

I'm attempting to build backlinks by submitting articles, posting on forums etc.  I just wrote my forst article for ezine and submitted it.

I was feeling pretty good about myself until I mentioned it to someone trying to sell me their SEO services and he said that ezine articles are considered "nofollow" on all their links.

Well, that was pretty frustrating to hear!  It got me wondering, how many of these other sites have all their posts and blogs listed as "nofollow"?  Is there a way for me to figure it out ahead of time?  Obviously, there are only so many hours in the day and I would rather focus on posting on sites that will actually help me build backlinks!

Thanks for your help in advance!