Using Google Alerts Gives You an Advantage Over Your Competitors
Google Alerts is one of the most valuable tools for website owners offered by Google. It is a free service that allows you to keep track of any topic on the Internet. Google Alerts notifies you by email about the latest web and news information of your choice. Emails are automatically sent to you when there are new Google results for the search terms that you have identified. You can follow an important news story or read about the latest industry information. You can keep track of what people are saying about you or your business. As an online business owner, you can have an advantage over your competition by utilizing Google Alerts. The alerts can be used to spy on your competitors or keep up-to-date with the latest information in your industry.
Find Out What Others Are Saying About You or Your Business
To protect your reputation It is a good idea to monitor what people are saying about you online. With Google Alerts you can create search terms on both your name and your business name. That way whenever something is written about you, whether positive or negative, you will receive an alert and can react appropriately to the situation.
Back Links
When selecting search terms that are related to your niche, the links sent to you become an important source for potential linking partners. If you selected “Blog” as the type of alert you want, many of those links connect to you blog sites that will allow comments with a link back to your site. Click on the link to these blogs and check whether you can leave a comment and the URL to your site. Submit relevant comments based on the topic discussed and you have a new back link to your website.
Getting Started
To get started with Google Alerts is easy. Just sign up for a Google account or log in if you already have one.
Click on “more” drop down box at the top left and then click on “even more”. Click on “Alerts”.
• Select the “Topic” of interest
• Choose the type of alert ‘News’, ‘Web’, ‘Blogs’, ‘Comprehensive’, ‘Video’ and ‘Groups’
• Choose the frequency of how often you want to receive it
• Enter your email address
• Click on “Create Alert”
You can also click on a link on the left of this page to manage your alerts.
Once you have created an alert, you have the choice of receiving the email message in HTML or Text.
Depending on the popularity of your chosen keywords, you should receive between 10-20 links each day per alert.
Google Alerts offers 6 variations of alerts
• News - an email aggregate of the latest news articles that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google News search.
• Web - an email aggregate of the latest web pages that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top twenty results of your Google Web search.
• Blogs - an email aggregate of the latest blog posts that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google Blog search.
• Comprehensive - an aggregate of the latest results from multiple sources (News, Web and Blogs) into a single email to provide maximum coverage on the topic of your choice.
• Video - an email aggregate of the latest videos that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top ten results of your Google Video search.
• Groups - an email aggregate of new posts that contain the search terms of your choice and appear in the top fifty results of your Google Groups search.
Suggestions:
• Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
• Enclose alert search terms within quotes so that you get relevant results.
• If you have related topics you can create one alert and separate the terms using OR operator. Example: “blog” OR “blogging”
You can create up to 1000 alerts with Google. You may need to experiment with Google Alerts for a while before choosing the terms that deliver the most significant results for you.
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Comments
Hi,
If you want to comment on our blog, why don’t you? Would you like it if I simply added a backlink to your site? Probably not. It doesn’t show a lot of respect for other bloggers trying to get their name out there.
A comment with your URL would be acceptable. We are all in this together. Let’s work together, instead of just being self centered.
Judy Ritsema
Judy,
Thanks for your feedback. I was taught by a very successful blog master that trackbacks are a sign of respect and are meant as a compliment to the relevant site in which they trackback to. I am sorry if you feel that I disrespected you or your site when I linked specifically from my article to yours in my blog post. I chose your site because I thought your post was very good.
Regards,
Sue Scaletta
Hi Sue,
Thanks for the feedback on the article. I only wish you would have said that on our blog, with a trackback. Would have loved it! So, what did you like about it?
That’s interesting to me that a blog master said to NOT comment but leave a trackback only, is a compliment.
I would be interested in knowing who it is. The blog masters I learned from said trackbacks with a comment, critical or good, is the best way to build relationships and is the best compliment. I learned from John Cow, Yaro Starak, and the Comment Kahuna software creators, to name a few.
I am working with Michael Cheney right now, and he even said building relationships isn’t just putting your URL as a comment, for forums, blogs, social sites, etc.
He said if you met someone face to face for the first time, you wouldn’t just shove a business card in their face and walk off. That made perfect sense to me, so I just try and follow that strategy.
No hard feelings, but I love getting to know people and I will be linking you to our site, as well.
Judy Ritsema
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