Demand Media & Link Building - OMG?

[Francisco_Meza]

When the last linkscape update happened, I saw a new incoming link from USA Today Travel. SeoMoz rates the link as a 9.5 for DA and PA is 24. The article was written by someone from Demand Media. I tried contacting the author to work out a deal. Since I did not receive a response, I investigated Demand Media myself.  They are a large group of content writers. I have finished building the site and now I'm in the link building process for highly competitive keywords.

My 2 Questions:

1. I can write articles all freakin day about what I do. I NEED to build links. Should I become a freelancer for Demand Media? I don't care about the pay because I am well paid.
2. Is there anything to be concerned about with the Panda Update?

• All responses are appreciated. Please give me a thumbs up if you found this question interesting (because apparently some other post says nobody gives thumbs up)

[EGOL]

If I had content good enough to make it on USA Today I would be looking at the following to make my decision on how to use it.....

-- If that content was "my important message" I would syndicate it to everybody everywhere.

-- If I owned a great website with zero traffic I would allow its use on USAToday as a way to publicize my website.

-- If I owned a great website with nice traffic I would publish that content only on my own site.  With content that good why should I give it to USAToday and earn links for their site?

All of the above assumes top quality content.  If your content is crap you should give it to your competitor and allow him to syndicate it everywhere with his name on it.

[Francisco_Meza]

EGOL, thanks for the reply. I failed to mention the article 'referenced' me, they did not write specifically about my site. My competitors used directory links and spammy techniques to rank for my highly competitive keywords.  I believe in what you said on your profile:

Favorite Thing About SEO: "Launching new content! Watching it climb the SERPs through passive linkbuilding."

This is my site: http://www.shipoverseas.com ; actually my client's site that I built and am marketing.

I think your 1st suggestion fits me the best. The 3rd would be good if I made a blog, but I didn't make one yet.

I have concluded, I need a mentor in this area of marketing.

EGOL, how do I get syndicated? This is a new field for me. I want to 'earn' links instead of chasing people for links.

[EGOL]

How do I get syndicated?

I think that there are a variety of activities that could be called "syndication".  Perhaps the most common is to give entire articles to other websites (through syndication sites like ezinearticles.com) and have links embedded in those articles that send traffic and linkjuice back to your website.  We never do that.  We believe that our content is too valuable.  We want our site to be the unique source for that content.  Also, we don't want to feed our competitors content that will put them into our SERPs.  Nor do we want to create new competitors.  Giving away articles does that.

Instead, we place the full article on our site and allow our visitors to spread the word about our content.  They do this by giving the title and a summary sentence to sites such as slashdot.com, digg.com, reddit.com or stumbleupon.com.  With these sites you get the word spread about your content without giving the content away.

Another methods is with an RSS feed that publishes a summary sentence about your article that other websites can publish that often includes a link back to your website where the original (and only) copy of that article will reside.

[Francisco_Meza]

I will be syndicating content via ezinearticles.com. I am also looking into demand media. You brought up a good point though. I don't want my articles from those content sites to compete with my own. By taking a look at my PA, DA, DmT, mR and all metrics, I need to build DA the most. So the articles I will write are not for my main keywords on the homepage. Instead the articles will have embedded links pointing to subcategories instead of the home page. For some reason my home page PA is 45 while DA is 35. Any thoughts? By the way, thanks for helping a mozzer out. You're going to be my new mentor. Cisco