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OK so who's willing to share this advice. Any kind "REAL" media publishers out there?

Funny you should ask, Rand just did a video on this exact topic: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/competitive-link-analysis-tips-whiteboard-friday

Run a search with Open Site Explorer and select "links from external pages" and "to all pages on the subdomain", then export the .csv. That way you have all the links the Roger Mozbot has found linking to your site with PA and DA metrics. Or use Yahoo! Sitexplorer, that gives you the opportunity to export the report too.

Lots of universities have a veterans association or a page where veterans benefits are posted.  You can try queries like this one for Stanford to identify potential link pages.

Thanks. I've used Link Assistant and it works well. I was thinking more along the lines of something that would track the progress of links I had requested rather than the status of links already acquired. Stuff like date, URL of potential link, action I took, link text used/requested, status of request, person I had requested the link from, etc. If anyone has a good resource please let me know

We use advanced links manager with SEOmoz's Linkscape. You can also compare your OSE reports over time.

Thanks, we will opt to stay away from using these type of services.   Appreciate the response.

What about reporting the "black links" - did anyone had success doing that ?

es-ee-oh exactly how would someone end up in a "natural" link wheel?  the odds of that happening naturally have to be a million to one...

Well, one way would be to look in the source code of the website. Find the profile link and see if there is a rel="nofollow" attribute in there. Or, get the SEOmoz toolbar and click the NoFollow finder, it will highlight nofollow links in pink, i believe.

Thanks, i will see what I can come up with, in the meantime I'll make sure any links to press releases or squidoo, and the like will be clean....

I've seen this as still effective in the B2B space, and other sectors that historically release company announcements via press releases instead of a blog.  If you're trying to optimize around B2C and it's not really a news worthy press release it probably won't have much pull.  Google has gotten better and better at correlating search spikes that merit news results and identifying the press releases that merit addition to their search results.  I'd look at press releases and use them in these areas: 1. Regular (Q, H, monthly, what not) Announcement / Core Value Statement 2. New product release 3. Corporate comments on business recognition: awards, analyst review, etc.

Both are desirable.  I'd personally go with Domain authority and Page Authority over relevance if I had to choose. Links from monster news sites, mash-ups and other high traffic sites really pack a wallop. Need Proof - go to the Keyword Difficulty tool and check the top ranking sites for a series of terms. We have found some result listings that have little to no relevance but massive domain authority which carries the day. FYI Use the Mozbar plugin when logged in to get more accurate data than PR. Or if you're getting really down and dirty go with The SEOMoz Linkscape Tool and run an advanced report by site links.

Yes, there is. It's not based on old-school SEO value though as much as newer reasoning. Press releases definitely have much more churn than ever - so many sent out by so many companies every day, many of which are junk / very low quality.  So any link value you get is going to be at a much lower count than they used to generate, and many will stick around a lot less - shelf life is much shorter. At the same time however, if you opt for the wider distribution options (such as PRWeb's top two options) you're more likely to get at least some decent sites in the mix (and especially if you go with the top tier release option).  This is much more valid if the releases you create only contain one or a couple links in the content.  And don't opt to include your web site embedded in their iFrame.  It's a terrible usability issue, and offers NO value - and most definitely will not be picked up by high end news feeds. The other SEO value comes from the fact that those quality sites that do pick them up and post them do provide not just link value but mentions related to branding. Also be sure to take the time to properly categorize the release in terms of the right industry and regional reach. On a final note, they're most effective when you send them out on a regular basis - not too often, yet no less than three or four times a year. And only when you have something that's truly worthy of a legitimate press release.

Lots of WMT data is worthless. Like previous poster, I am still seeing backlinks from a couple of years ago, as well as completely off total backlink count. You're much better of using OSE.