[cstreit]

I don't necessarily have an issue with drop-ship vendors per se providing they can manage the customer service and information needs of the consumer. Obviously there is a proliferation of sites that do nothing other than collect and transmit orders and couldn't answer a specific question if they had to... ...but they aren't all like that. Inventory costs are high and covering a wide line of products from manufacturers can require huge buy-ins that just aren't affordable to the new business. Call it a "micro-business" if you will. It really boils down to the ability to service the customer.

Anyway, DDan, thank for the response. I'll PM you some details but the real question out for discussion is this: What strategies REALLY work to increase search engine rankings. There are a lot of "jump-site" type of ideas out there that will inevitably get you blacklisted and plenty of other ways to ensure you will NOT be successfuly.

Obviously content and context-appropriate linking is a good method... ..but not the end-all be-all. Linking from other relavent and ranked sites also rates high but this is tough to do when the relavent sites for an e-tailer are typically competitors.