How do I in Drupal 7 hook into the status message update area after saving a node and it says "updated node" to be a link to that node
You can use hook_node_update() that responds to node updates. There you can add the link in drupal_set_message().

However you may get two status messages, a default status message and another the custom message you just created. For removing the default message you can use Disable Messages module.