In the last couple of years or so, there have been quite a few new entrants to the much-in-demand domain of link building outside the ubiquitous  software basis of reversing backlinks of competitors (such as LAA, Open Site Explorer, Link Intersect etc) as well as consulting and direct purchase.

In this blog post, I shall try to focus on some of the major new tools and services, as well as offer certain long-standing options some SEOs might fail to grasp and implement.

Zemanta: A unique offering in the link building domain

The first on the list is Zemanta, one among the unique offerings available in the recent years. It allows publishers to submit a feed of images or text based content to them. The same then will appear in front of respective bloggers prominently in the ‘composition” window’ (when they pen their posts). These are termed ‘related posts’. Such posts have a wide array of benefits. Some of them are listed below:

Help improve branding: They help improve branding amongst a niche blogging audience. This becomes possible since bloggers are able to notice your website/brand name when they write.

Draw in direct links: They are able to draw in direct links (provided the bloggers opt to link to your work in the relevant post or perhaps as a ‘related post’ just at the bottom – or even through links directed from image references).

Attract direct (focused) traffic: They are able to attract direct (focused) traffic from the influential bloggers themselves. They are far likely to click on links/images/content that well seem to be catchy or interesting.

You can try highly useful service offered by Zemanta via a demo made available on their website. The service provider has (according to their expert team) been approved by search quality unit of Google formally as a white-hat service. This makes sense as all they are doing is displaying advertising content to writers, who are then able to decide if they wish to link or not) and is now added to WordPress and Blogger.

Those who have been making use of the service (paid usage of their service) for over 12 months (starting with a trial and then opting to carry on) have registered good results, which speaks for its usefulness and consistency. Most users reveal that they do get a regular stream of links to their content on the site with Zemanta. These link reports can be checked through their comprehensive reporting system on a monthly basis or otherwise.