Zemanta ~ Must Have Firefox Extension for Bloggers

This mama came across something new today. Something that completely changes blogging. Yes, it’s a big statement, but I am sure when you check it out you will be as completely psyched as I am about Zemanta.

What is Zemanta?

Zemanta is a very powerful firefox extension for bloggers. It is a very easy dowload, one click and a quick firefox restart.

What does Zemanta do?

Yeee Gadz, what doesn’t it do! Ok let’s take it from the top.

First of all once you have it installed it will show up when you open your write post page. It will show up in the sidebar of your blog area. It will provide you with images that are relevant to your blog post topic. These are all creative commons photos, and all you have to do is click on the picture. The credit link will show up just below the photo so you will be sticking with creative commons terms of service. If you don’t find an image that matches you can also do a “filter” which will let you search for images by keyword.

Next thing it does is show you relevant articles available on the topic of your blog post. Cool Huh? Now I don’t use those articles in my post, but if I’m stuck for ideas on a keyword topic they are awesome to go to and get some ideas.

Under your blog post you will notice it shows you relevant articles or information for specific keywords in your post. They will pop up as you write, so if you need feel your readers need a little more information about something in your post you can click the link and it will create a link within your post to that information. Way cool.

Now comes one of my favorite parts. TAGS. As you write your post Zemanta will start coming up with tags for your post. The will show up right below the tag box. When you are done you can choose to use any or all of the tags it came up with. Just click the tag and it will show up. You can still add your own tags, and make sure you add your post keyword to the list, as Zemanta probably will not pull that out. It does more general and one word tags.

Now once you have used a tag from Zemanta ~ and this is where it gets REALLY good, you will find a little icon that says reblog once you publish your post.

What is reblog?

Reblog is a kick ass feature to help you get more backlinks to your blog. If your readers really like your article they can click on the reblog icon and in the sidebar it will show your post broken up into paragraphs. They will have the option to choose one paragraph from your post to share on their site. Each reblog includes a keyword anchor text link to your site ~ your site title and tagline. WOO HOO!

I have friends who say this gets them more backlinks than article marketing! I’m pretty excited to find out just how well it works for me.

So there’s really no reason why you are still reading this and haven’t downloaded Zemanta yet. That is of course unless you are reblogging this post.

**** Update ****

Just wanted to let you all know that even within the few days I have been using Zemanta I have already received traffic from other sites that have used a link to my site that was recommended by Zemanta! That is very fun and exciting!!

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