A few questions about website promotion

I took a look at your website, and my main concern for you right now is developing your content to the extent that people would want to revisit or link to it. I see you have a few articles on it, but they don't have images and in general don't quite draw the user in. I see the beginnings of that, but I think you need to put work into it.

I also don't like some of the URLs like this one
High_Gear_Alterra_Shadow_Multi-Function_Wrist_Altimeter
The %20 should be replaced with a dash.

As for press releases, I think you would probably get the best results if you can find ways to identify new product releases, and be among the first to write about them, and then link to those product pages on your site.

Finally, I think in today's environment you may have too many links going on per page, and you might want to examine your internal link structure, as I think you may have some trouble getting enough juice to internal pages.

Good luck!

With regard to your content, I would be more interested in ACTUAL tests with REAL people. Let's take your very best article, and think about how we could get real people to look at. Maybe there is an outdoors or hiking forum for example that you get your link seen on, whether it be your signature or an actual post. When you get real people doing stuff on your site, then you know you are on the right track. Another test that you could try would be to install Disqus, and that would allow people to reply to some of your articles, and you can get yet another metric of how you are doing. This tutorial is how we did it on our software. It is probably similar.

As far as links, you have a pretty large category structure for a newer site. I'm not going to tell you to wipe the slate clean and start over again, but if you are having trouble getting traffic to internal pages as time progresses, I would most certainly look at concentrating the linkage more.

Think about it this way: most sites have about 20% of their pages that really perform well. By reducing the number of links you can focus the pagerank you are getting as a new site on a smaller swath, but have a much greater potential of getting ranked for long tail keywords on your internals.

dvduval has offered you some great advice. As far as the press releases go, they can give you some great backlinks and some added exposure (similar to article marketing), but unless you have a product that is totally different or changes the world in some way, the "newsworthiness" isn't going to matter.

I spent many years working in a newsroom, and we would get press releases every day. In the morning, the fax machine was full of them, and so were our email inboxes. 99.9% got deleted, because the media doesn't care that you have a new website or a new product. Unfortunately, there are alot of people out there who think that all they have to do is write a press release, and reporters will start calling. Unfortunately, it just doesn't work that way.

If you take press releases for what they are in the IM world (backlinks to sites with a high page rank), they can help.

Agreed, the press releases are more for backlinks than actual traffic or note worthy news.
So your first PR might be about opening the site.
The next one might be about a new section to your site or something your company is going to do for a community. I highly doubt anyone really cares as mentioned. Read though a few press releases and you will see most are insignificant

Stay away from the traffic swaps. Adsense will slap you if caught and that type of traffic is usually worthless anyway.

EVERY category page should have some unique text/content and be fully SEOed for that category's keywords. The category pages are where you concentrate on your broad keywords. (backpacking tents, etc...)
Then the reviews should concentrate on individual products.

But it looks like you have a good start. Just be sure to do your market/competitor research for each keyword phrase and keep plugging away at adding content. And never be afraid to test new ideas, ad placements, and new features. In fact without testing you will not convert very well unless you get very lucky.


Ken