apnews.com: a contextual link, and whether it is worth $150

$150 is a premium slot. Before committing, ask what the premium buys here: the 92 DA, the 30M audience, or the editorial guarantee that the link is not removed at the next refresh.

What makes a media placement behave differently from a blog placement is the traffic shape: a spike in the first 48 hours, then almost nothing, then a slow trickle that search supplies for months. That is a fine trade if you want proof your brand can be quoted; it is a poor trade if you bought the slot hoping for a permanent contextual link. Confirm the permalink will stay in the site's archive before you commit.

Ranked against the 2,000 listings we index, apnews.com sits in the top 100% for audience and the top 100% for authority, at $0.01 per thousand monthly visits. Inside the DA 70+ band (13 listings) that price ranks 1st for value, which is the comparison to use: nobody competes with the whole index, they compete with the sites a buyer would book instead.

Titles in this group are usually run by small teams with high volume, so turnaround depends on their queue rather than on your brief. A short, tightly edited 700-900 word contribution with one link and a named author clears desks that would reject a 2,000-word marketing essay with four.

Expect nofollow on the placement. Links like this keep a profile looking like a real business's links, and we have never seen a brand's search demand hurt by a citation from a 30M-visit publication.

Two comparisons decide whether apnews.com at $150 is a good buy: this listing against the 88 other News & Media entries we index, and against the whole 2,000-site index. The gap between those two answers is where a price is either justified or inherited from a rate card nobody revisited.

apnews.com has 90 DR against an index median of 51, 30M monthly visits against a median of 5.5k, and a placement price of $150 against $70. Where those three numbers point in different directions, the traffic figure is usually the honest one: it is what a publisher has to protect, and it is what decays first when a site starts selling too much inventory.

apnews.com out-ranks 100% of the index on audience size (about 5454.5× the index median) and 100% on authority. The placement costs $0.01 per thousand estimated visits, and cheaper per visit than 92% of the DA 70+ band. Those two figures, not the DA column alone, decide whether $150 is a good trade or just a listed one.

• Brand-proof pages where a citation from a title this size is the point of the exercise.
• Recovery work after a penalty, when the profile needs plausible, editorial-looking citations fast.
• Regulated or contested markets where a neutral publication carrying your name is worth more than a blog link.
• Do not buy this if the site's topical distance from your market needs three paragraphs of explanation. Relevance has to be obvious to a crawler reading the neighbourhood.
• Do not buy this if your profile has no branded searches yet and this is meant to be the single link that changes that. One 92 DA placement on a News & Media site is a start, not a strategy.

Pitch angle: a reaction piece on a regulatory or platform change your industry is currently dealing with. That is the shape we take to a News & Media audience, because it is the version the host's own editor has a reason to keep.

• Put one link in the body Exactly one, in the sentence where the article needs the source. A second link to your own domain is the most common reason a piece gets rewritten before publication.
• Add a heading someone would search A question-style H2 phrased the way the reader phrases it. This is what lets the article rank on its own, which is the difference between a placement that gets crawled weekly and one that gets crawled yearly.
• Name a real author A person with a title and a bio. Anonymous contributions on News & Media sites are the first thing an editor distrusts, and the first thing a reader discounts.

Anchor plan for this host

• one descriptive anchor that repeats the headline's subject, never your commercial keyword
• a naked URL only where the site's style allows it, which news desks rarely do mid-paragraph

• What happens on removal. apnews.com is covered by the same 12-month replacement terms as every other listing, which means a dropped link is rebuilt and re-reported rather than argued about.
• Indexation of the host's recent output. We run site:apnews.com and compare the count against the site's publishing rate. A property publishing weekly with a fraction of its pages indexed has a crawl or quality problem you would inherit.
• Disclosure policy. Whether the host labels paid contributions. A label costs you nothing in link value and protects the host from the penalty that removes the page.
• Editorial activity. A site with 30M monthly visits and nothing published in six months is a decaying asset, and decaying assets get dropped from the index in batches.

1. You send the target URL and your angle The page you want the link to point at, the subject, and any author you want credited. Five minutes of input.
2. We confirm availability on apnews.com Publisher slots move week to week, including on 92 DA properties. Nothing is promised until the section and the placement URL are confirmed, and we tell you before you pay if the slot has gone.
3. You approve the brief and the shortlist Where the host gives a choice of section or existing article, we send options with the numbers that matter: traffic, indexation, neighbours.
4. The article is drafted and edited for the host Written for apnews.com's audience rather than for your keyword, then checked against the site's own style before submission.
5. The host publishes; we verify the live URL Placement live, correct target, link attribute as recorded, indexable. Only then does the order count as delivered.
6. You get the report, and the replacement cover starts PDF and CSV with the live URL, anchor, placement date and target page. Twelve-month replacement on the link itself, no ticket required.

If the article you want published needs expert authorship, data or photography, that work is included; if it needs a regulated-industry review, say so early, because it changes the timeline rather than the price.

What comes with this placement

• Link attribute verified on the published page and reported as found.
• Availability confirmed on the exact URL before you are invoiced.
• 12-month replacement cover: if the link drops, we rebuild it.
• One contextual placement inside an article written for apnews.com's audience, not a link directory entry.

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