I think its okay, because you're paying for service and its pure white hat, its just like using adwords and msn at the same time.

there are some good ones out there (fast directory submitter, IBP, webceo) but they are meant to be viewed as supplementary ones for the ones you create manually.

it doesn't matter don't worry

I am a fan of press releases and indeed they work (well for me) as long as you have great magnetic headlines (read: copyblogger & shoemoney) a great copy can always go a long way!

Paid tools... you really have to invest in order for you to conquer, I can share some but I personally think SEOmoz has all of them but you can still find good ones outside which SEOmoz also mentions hehehe

Hi Kevin,

It is really hard to assume that a website is using BH unless I am able to check them myself, but for starters (which I believe you already did) you can always check the FF: PR, Links (inbound & outbound) use yahoo for this, use the tools in SEOmoz for this too to determine the quality of links.

You see it could also mean that those websites are of diff. IP's and each site is linking to authority domains, needless to say but you also have to check your website if it is really optimized and the duration thereof for its caching.

Now this is a handful but I am excited as to the outcome of this.

Cheers!