Thanks again for everything!

Thank you, that is the answer I was looking for!

We did make a couple of videos. I took your (Seomoz) advice and started shooting some short clips. They are already on Youtube for a few months know and we are working on several ideas to create a long term plan for releasing at least 1-2 videos per month. This is how it looks: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxCiPV17s0Y&feature=feedlik).

About ranking in local search, I talk to Rand about it on a private question and my opinion is that unless I have an exact match domain and tens/hundreds of local reviews, I'm not going to be able to outrank my competitors. Google seems to rank companies based on their listing address without checking the facts and this is so frustrating. For example, I know for a fact that NONE of my competitors have an office downtown Chicago but they do on their Google listing and that counts a lot because the closer you are to Downtown Chicago the better you rank. Also, they use very strong keywords as their listing Title instead of the name of their company as per Google guidelines. It seems that not only they are not getting penalized for that but they are even being pushed at the top. When Google still puts so much weight on exact match domain, when business are taking advantage of the system by posting  fake reviews and using other shady tactics to rank high in local search, there is not too much I can do. Everybody here is preaching a white hat approach and I fully supported but for smaller companies like mine is not that easy to put up with spammy websites because Google doesn't do enough about it. I don't want to lead this discussion somewhere else; I just had to say something about it.

Your thoughts are always greatly appreciated.

I kind of knew you gonna say that...when I see my competitors ranking so high up using spammy techniques, all my patience goes away and all I'm thinking about is is how to gain back my position in Google. The problem is that I need results fast, 70% of my company's revenue is coming from our online presence. We don't do ANY paid advertising which means that if we go down to page two in Google, the phones stop ringing.  You see, it's not always what you should do but what you can do. I need time and money to find very good writers to create that kick-ass content that you talk about and when I do find them and have the articles ready it is very hard not to publish them online where the results will appear much faster.

Egol, I saw your response after I submitted my answer above. Although you gave good advice most of the time, I am not sure if your answer is wright more me. As I see it, you create awesome content most of the time, the websites that you put your content on are very strong or at least strong enough to rank for the keywords that you target on those articles. I understand that but if my website is not as strong as yours, shouldn't I have to use, even temporarily, other means to get the word out until my website grows stronger?

Sha, I like your response, a very professional approach. My press releases are going to be submitted to major online Release sites. It was just a question if I should put them on my website or not. It does make a lot of sense because the whole idea of a press release is to generate the attention of journalists who then use your contact information provided to call you and get a conference for information that they can write about. They want things that are of general usefulness for the public, not just simple promotion, that's what advertising pages are for.

The thing is, I have been doing SEO for about a year now and it seems to me that there is no wright answer. What works for you might not work for me and vice-versa.  I am not going to have my press releases on my website. I read that the articles SHOULD be put on your website although even the best content guys on Seomoz have different opinions about this. What’s your take on this subject? Do you publish your articles on your website before or after you submit them online?

Although I agree with people like Egol or Ryan who supports the idea of having the articles published on your website first ("why give it away to somebody else if it's that good")__, this approach is not for everyone. For me, it makes sense to have them pushed through bigger article publishing websites because I get much more exposure. My site is not as powerful as I want it to be to get the most out of those articles.

Robert,

Your assumption is correct, I do have dedicated pages to those keywords. Our site has only a blog, would you recommend creating a new page "In the press" or build a new category on the blog with that name? I would have all my press releases hosted there, what do you think?
I am using some companies recommended by Seomoz.

I have started a long-term article marketing campaign and press release distribution. I will have about 4 articles and press releases in total every month. Although the press releases will not be self-promotional, sometimes they will be talking about a certain product that we unveil.

The question is, due to the high quality of these press releases, should I put them on my website as well as publish them on third party websites? If so, because they target a specific service/product which we already have a dedicated page on our website, wouldn't that put Google in the position of choosing between the two pages?

I was thinking to put them on my blog and link internally from there with the keywords that I target on those pages as anchor text. The same question for articles. Any suggestions?

Thank you!

Ryan, is there no downside for having AddThis button with 4 -5 outbound links especially if they are placed high up on the page? Did you apply the no-follow attribute?

I understand, we can format the pages on the blog as we want. That is the answer that I was looking for. 
Thanks!

Egol, I just want to make sure I understand this right. My blog is part of my website and is not a subdomain. I have "absolute control over formatting, optimization and appearance". Why would I create separate pages and not use the blog to publish my articles?