besides telling friends (which I have done) or using yahoo answers
There are numerous ways;
1. Submission of quality articles to article directories on the web like ezinearticles.com and goarticles.com. At the end of the message they allow you to put a link to your website or blog. Its free!
2. Blogs - You can create blogs providing [...]

I am looking to find the company that everyone recommends and have used for years to write their press releases. A company that in others experience really go all out and do not charge more than is fair for their service. Can anyone help?
What you are actually looking for is a writer and not a [...]

I'm applying for a freelance copywriting position with an online marketing company. What kind of writing sample should I send to something like this? I have a BA and MA in English. I have tons of academic research papers but is that what they want? I've also written press releases, memos [...]

to bringing in traffic of course.
BUT.
I always thought you release the press releases and articles to up the ranking of your own customized SEO pages in your domain.
But what if my domain's landing page isn't optimized for search engines?
Can the press releases and articles used as a doorway page for ITSELF to be ranked [...]