What Links Have the Most Value?

Rand asks do links from the top ranked sites for your keyword have the most pull?

The question I pose today, however, is on the subject of links from the top ranking pages in the existing SERPs. These links are heavily pursued by SEOs and traffic builders as good sources for both referrals and high conversion visitors. After all, if the visitors are primarily coming through search, it's easy to determine whether they are likely to convert simply by running PPC campaigns in those results. But, let's imagine for a moment that the visitor value was entirely removed from the equation, and the link was purchased/cajoled/traded purely for the purpose of boosting rankings.... Are the highest ranking pages on a subject providing the most valuable links?

Jim Boykin offers a workaround into the neighboorhood:

I'd have to say that getting links from the "Similar pages" to those in the top 5 might even be better. (Google's "related:" command).

These "related/similar" sites are sites that have common backlinks to the top sites...so a kind of "back door" approach to getting "in the neighborhood" is approaching those sites since they help to identify the neighborhood.

It is a bit hard to separate out the direct and indirect effects of a link, especially if a story goes viral. A few months ago EGOL made a post about the importance of natural links and other elements of SVA. Sometimes the best part of a good link is the onslaught of secondary links that follow.