An old fashion and sometimes often used method today, to get links to your web site, is to use press releases with embedded links in those releases.
So you'd contract a press release distribution company and make sure that the content of the release have links to your web site. That release would hopefully be syndicated by other news outlets and those outlets will keep the links intact.
Matt Cutts of Google said in a Google Webmaster Help forums that links from press releases shouldn't have a positive impact on your rankings.
Now, when you do press releases, it might get your web site in front of the eyes of bloggers, reporters and others, where what they write or link to may have an impact on your rankings. But the links within the releases themselves, Google says - they won't benefit your rankings.
Its a Very interesting posting by Matt on the help forums, however I think it may confuse some people. Matt isn't saying that press releases won't help. What Matt is saying is that press releases that are posted to press release sites without getting picked up by real news sites won't help. He's saying: links from press release sites won't help your rankings.
So what do you do? Still do press releases, but make them newsworthy enough to get picked up by news sites. Getting links from industry news sites that have a long history (3 or more years old) are great links to get.
