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.

Backlinks

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 backlink 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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.

Tagged with: Backlinks • Favorite Links • Google Alerts

Filed under: Backlinks • Business

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