The best place to get the strongest links?

Hi Guys

I do pretty well when it comes to my sites and due to my layout and interlinking I havent done any major linking for a while as my rankings do what I need them to do money wise but I have been doing some tests.

I have been testing on some of my area pages, building links towards them to see whats working and what doesnt.

So far I have been playing about with blogs, building keyword blogs specific to the term and the area and making posts whilst linking back to the area page I want to rank better for.

All has gone well and worked but now I am looking to start to build links towards the generic keyword pages and home page to try to get them ranking better which I beleive will in turn drag the rest of the sites pages up with it.

My question is will this same technique I have been using for the area pages work with the generic keyword pages and home page or am I going to need something a bit stronger, ie better links?

If so what do you suggest I do? I have been thinking about starting to do some press releases as I am about to launch something unique into my industry, will these help, how strong?

Whats your take on relevance? I have found that whilst profile links do work they are limited in power and only work for a certain amount of time and thats me building them to pages on other websites not mine, I wouldnt build that kind of crap towards a site I owned.

I think this could bring up some good answers allot of warriors need to know.

Any ideas?