What is Google Alerts
Google Alerts is the best way to know when your name, or that of your business, is being searched on Google.
For example, it can be used to recognize when a particular product or service is being searched, perhaps the same one you may offer.
With Google Alerts, this Information reaches you on your email inbox, letting you understand the search audience for certain keywords of interest.
How to activate Google Alerts
1.Go to https://www.google.it/alerts.
2.Type in your search term and Google will give you a preview of the results.
3.Click on show options.
With show options the filters of our search are shown and in particular:
- Frequency: set how often you want to receive the alert, such as once or several times a day.
- Sources: you can select from where to receive the alerts, from all over the web or just from blogs. If you are not sure, at least initially, leave the selection on automatic.
- Language: you are probably interested in sources in Italian, but you can select any existing language.
- Region: the above consideration applies, select Italy if yours is a local or national business.
- Quantity: select according to your preference only the top results or all results.
- Enter email: is the email on which you want to receive, based on the filters you set, alerts.
Now that you know how to set up filters, let’s see how to take advantage of using Google Alerts.
Watch when someone mentions you or your brand
When you gain visibility on the web, people tend to mention you in their articles, blogs, or anywhere else on the web.
You can use Google Alerts to be informed of this situation and get information about people using your name or brand.
Another important thing is to make sure that when your name is used, there is an active link to your website.
This will increase traffic, visibility in SERPs, and as a result, you will get organic backlinks to your website.
So, when Google alerts you to the use of your name or brand, you can find out whether or not your link is there.
If not, you could request the creator of that content, to add a link on his article to your web page.
You can do this by sending a courtesy email to the author.
Find out and keep track of negative reviews
You have many to please, but you can’t please everyone.
The risk is to have a few negative reviews that, if not monitored, will produce negative effects to your image on the Web.
Google reviews are still the most reliable reviews on the Internet.
On Google you authenticate yourself before posting a review even though haters or unfair competitors, may create fake accounts for this purpose.
When you receive an e-mail alert, try to determine if it is related to a negative review.
If it is, you can respond to it to protect your online reputation, or report it if it turns out to be a fake review.
Check your competition
You can check your competitors and see what they are doing to maintain their positions on Google.
When you set up Google Alerts for keywords for your products and services, you will also receive alerts for searches involving your competitors.
Analyze these links and find out what you can do to increase your visibility.
It may be enlightening to change the SEO search keys you are using or to target the right audience, but the main point is that you will almost certainly learn something useful from your competition.
Avoid spams to your site
Web site spams are a huge problem.
Often, people inject keywords or links containing spam into sites.
If not kept under control, these situations can be a big threat to your Web site’s security, so it’s best to get rid of them immediately.
Google alerts can be set up to protect your site from malicious negative SEO links.
This can be done easily by setting a Google alert for words that you believe promote spam or bad SEO words.
You can set Google Alerts to “for your site only.”
This will help you get information when a malicious hacker attacks your site.
Read blogs in your niche market
You could find on the net, blogs that deal with the topics related to your products or services and try, to establish some kind of collaboration with the purpose of asking bloggers to link your page in the relevant articles.
You are a business you can consider this method of promotion to improve web visibility and increase sales.
Try entering a site name and “blog” as a keyword, or your keyword plus “blog” to get a list of blogs in your niche.
Participate in forums related to your niche.
Google alerts are letting you know where your presence is needed, so go there and show up.
Practical examples of smart use
If you type into Google Alerts the string:
[web marketing]+site:[linkedin.com]+insite:(who|what|where|when)
you will get, as a result, a series of questions that users of linkedin, a site I used as an example, try to answer.
You can derive some advantages from this fact:
- What are the questions you are trying to answer.
- What are the answers you should be giving on your site and have not yet provided.
If you answer the most frequently asked questions about your business, your visibility, and Google’s subsequent liking of you, will also increase.
Conclusions
These are just some of the benefits you can get through the use of Google Alerts.
You can definitely experiment with keywords and settings to get even more out of it.
Of course, it takes a lot of effort and time but, in the end, your efforts will pay off.
Being on the first page of Google is like winning a lottery jackpot, and Google provides you with all the tips and tricks you need to get on the first page.
All you have to do is learn how the tools it provides you with work.
Google’s alerts have proven useful for many businesses, mainly because of its ability to help you monitor your competitors.
Don’t waste this opportunity: use Google Alerts to grow your business.
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