I posted part of this message (see below) in another dying thread... so sorry for semi-duplication here. My question, though, probably is of general interest to other noobs like me.. And the questoin is this: Is something like what follows--a link from a cnn.com page that located in a deep subfolder--a quality link: http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/07/smbusiness/incorporate_business.fsb/index.htm?postversion=2008041512 I.e., half way down this page, there's a link to "Steve Nelson" which is my CPA site. This web site's subdomain home pages have high PR (8s, etc.). The Alexa ranking is high. Traffic to the cnn.com web sites are probably huge... But what I wonder is whether this page is SO deeply located in sub-sub--sub-sub-subfolders, etc., as to be nearly unfindable. Any comments? I guess what I'm really wondering about, thinking about, etc., are the physical characteristics of a high quality link.) P.S. If anyone is interested (say because this is a high quality link) I'll share some thoughts on building these sorts of links.
I think if you have a link on cnn website its a good link. How old is the page its on? maybe Google hasn't ranked yet?
All things considered, it's about as good as it gets for a free link-a citation for quotation attribution within an article on an Authority site. Unfortunately, it won't give much of a SERP boost, since the anchor is your name, for which you now rank sixth. This link might bring you to fourth or so, but you'll have to beat the Wiki articles and the singer's site on top. Apart from that, this page will wind up being PR 3-5, so it will give strong indexing juice and keep giving as it ages. By itself, it probably won't tip you over the "6" bar, but if you're close, this one could give an extra edge. An excellent placement. We'd all like tips in getting such links, I believe. Will it work for any niche or do you have a method for getting quoted in financial articles only?
I actually think the page is a couple of weeks old... but I'll share this because it's maybe interesting/useful to others... I talked with a very nice writer at Fortune Small Business (which is actually cooperatively published or something with money.cnn.com) during tax season. I said, hey, be happy to help you... but I'm super-busy as a cpa so you got to give me a link if I'm going to break from my real work and help you. She said, dude, no problem. A couple of weeks go by... the article gets posted... the main pages link to article and all seems well. EXCEPT the promised link hadn't been included on page. So now I whine... she apologizes, arranges for link to be added, etc. But by this time, the page isn't easily available from the home page. It's (apparently) archived in some sub-sub-sub folder (as noted). So, to sum up, page is new and yes I wouldn't expect it to show real PR yet.
Thanks for feedback. So here's the secret (if you want to call it that)... I think you need to make yourself available as a quotable source in an area you can claim some expertise in... and then the quid pro quo needs to be "your help" for "their link"... Obviously, this is a very inefficient bartering process. Literally, it's probably easier to get 100 or even 500 low-quality links than it is to promote yourself to a dozen professional writers, negotiate with them, and then, every so often, get a good link. As you note in you original full message, there's also a "problem" with the anchor text. I wanted something more in line with what shows in my sig... Also, while all my friends, etc., call me "Steve," SEO-wise and Author-wise, I don't really go by "steve nelson" but really by "Stephen Nelson"... I think I already rank very highly if you search on that. Of course, that's meaningless in a sense.