I didn't know much about Google Alerts before, but after reading about it and using it, I didn't know how I could have worked without it.
Google Alerts is one of the very powerful and useful tools in e-marketing and content writing, as you can use it in dozens of ways to help you with your work.
In this article, I will introduce you to this free tool from Google, explain how it works, and how it can help you with many of your tasks.
What are Google Alerts?
Google Alerts is a free tool from Google that can act as a new member of your team who acts as an internet monitor 24 hours a day.
You just tell her that you are interested in what is published about any keyword, and she will send every new post about this word or phrase on the Internet to your e-mail.
Google Alerts interface layout
Or it can even follow a specific site for you, sending you a periodic email with everything that this site publishes on the Internet.
I bet there are dozens of ideas flashing in your head right now, yes, this simple tool can literally help you get better results and also beat your competition.
Google Alerts can track news, blogs, web notifications, videos, books and even money news, and send you email notifications and alerts.
This tool was launched in 2003, and since then there are many people relying on it in many areas, and there are also many sites and companies that are trying to offer competing tools, whether free or paid, such as Alerts from Ahrefs.
This tool was not launched for any particular group, and press workers were the ones who benefited most from it, but over time marketers and content writers have noticed how it can be used, and now they are the ones who use it the most.
How do Google Alerts work?
Google Alerts simply works by monitoring the keywords you ask them to monitor, and alerting you to them using emails based on the frequency you choose in the settings, and it's all for free.
As you can see the way the tool works is very simple and understandable, but the secret here is how you will use it, and how you will make it work for you.
This tool, as you will see, works for the success of your social relations strategy, and will help you with your marketing strategies in addition to providing you with new ideas for content.
It will also monitor your competitors for you, inform you about the chances of raising your site's ranking on search engines, and dozens of other things.
Also Read: Best SEO Tools (They will make a big difference to your site's success)
Top 6 Uses of Google Alerts
Of course, there are so many uses for Google Alerts, and limiting them all to one article is very difficult or even impossible.
So, in this article, we will mention 6 uses that we think are the most important and influential for us as e-marketers, content writers or website owners.
1. Follow up on new content for keywords that interest you
This is one of the first and most important uses that you should pay attention to, by placing alerts on the keywords that interest you or related to your niche, you will learn the latest trends and topics that others are interested in.
For example, here at Seo7u we focus on keywords, such as: digital marketing, profit from the Internet or freelancing, and by setting alerts for these keywords, we will be able to learn about new topics for this niche.
On the one hand, these alerts will allow us to get new article ideas, and on the other hand, they will keep us informed of the changes taking place around us in the world of digital content.
Most important of all, these alerts will help us know what competitors are doing, and this is the second important use that we will talk about.
2. Monitor competitors and know what they are doing
It is very important for the owner of every website or business to monitor what his competitors are doing, in order to outperform them and not to outdo him, because the competition has become very intense these days.
This almost daily task of monitoring competitors can become a bit difficult especially if your time is very limited and there are a lot of tasks to do.
But the Google Alerts tool comes that enables you to follow up on everything new that competitors are doing with ease and saves a lot of time. You only need to create an alert using their website links.
Receive alerts about a specific site
For example, here at Seo7u we need to periodically check what sites specialized in our same niche publish.
And I'm not lying to you, this task is sometimes very tedious even though it does not consume much time or effort, but to enter on a daily or weekly basis to these sites and check what is published on them is something that is easy to forget, so we use Google Alerts to help us.
3. Follow what people are saying about your site, your brand or your products
Sometimes it is very important to follow what people are saying about you, especially if you are offering a product and want to track negative online customer reviews to address their problems.
You can do this simply through the Google Alerts tool, by making an alert for the name of your products, company, courses or the thing you want to track.
Periodically, you will receive emails with links to sites that mention the name or names you specified, and there is a way that you can benefit from more Google Alerts.
For example, if you care about the quality or price of your products, you can place the alert on it and attach it with the word quality, prices, price, expensive, or any words you think are relevant to what you want to know.
In this way, the links that come to your inbox will be more relevant to what you want to know, and will save you a lot of time and effort.
4. Get backlinks to your site
Backlink is one of the things that we seek as website owners, because it contributes greatly to raising the quality and ranking of the site on search engines, and it is called Off Page SEO.
Unfortunately because it is difficult to monitor all sites manually, and to search for sites that mention our site name or anything about it, we have to use another method.
Google Alerts may be the right tool for this, it makes it very easy, you can make an alert for your site name, to receive all new websites that mention your site name.
In this case, you will make sure that the site owner has placed a link to your site that he mentioned or not, and if he did not put it, you can communicate with him to convince him to put the link.
And do not worry, it will be much easier than if you were trying to convince him to do the backlink for you, in fact, it will be very easy, all that is required of him is to put the link to your site only.
With this, you will have a new backlink pointing to your site, and your site's ranking in search results will improve, thanks to Google Alerts.
5. Monitor your digital products illegally sold or published by others
If you offer a course, digital book, software or any other type of digital product for profit purposes, you will always try to counter any theft or illegal dissemination of such products.
Google Alerts will make this easier for you, by placing an alert containing the name of your product that you provide, for example the name of the book you sell attached to a PDF or the name of the course you sell followed by Free.
You will receive on the email all attempts to sell or leak these products illegally, and therefore you will be able to confront them and save your products.
6. Finding Guest Post Opportunities for Your Site
Guest Post is one of the terms you will come across a lot if you are interested in SEO.
It's a way to get backlinks, but through a win-win situation deal.
You are writing a post on another site that has the same niche for your site in exchange for placing a backlink to your site inside it, whether this link is for an article on the site or the home page of your site or the like.
By setting an alert for your niche or topic of interest followed by something like “Write to us” or a guest post, you will periodically receive opportunities available to you.
You can make an alert for this, for example, through: [the topic that interests you] + “Write to us” or [the niche of your site] + “Guest Post”.
Try this method and you will be amazed at the results.
Read also: Top 10 Free Traffic Sources (Targeted and Engaged Traffic)
Important Tips for Using Google Alerts Tool Effectively
There are a few things I've tried myself about Google Alerts, and they've proven very effective so let me share them with you:
1. Use more than one alert: Google Alerts allows you to make 1,000 alerts, so don't be stingy when using it, although using one alert can help, using multiple alerts - each one specific - will be more beneficial to you.
2. Use specific keywords as much as possible: If you want to track something or a topic, try to narrow your search as much as possible, because this will avoid dozens or hundreds of useless links.
3. Use Google Alerts filters: There are a lot of tuning options that you can use in Google Alerts, such as: number of times sent, sources, language, region, number of results, and these filters will help you get the results you specifically want.
Google alerts settings options
4. Make misspellings alerts: This varies depending on the words you want to use, but sometimes misspelled words can be a lot of interest to you in what you want.
Conclusion
Google Alerts is one of the very powerful tools that you can use in marketing and content writing, and it will greatly help you in achieving your marketing strategies and goals.
The tool is very easy and simple, and almost anyone can use it without being a professional or even an expert in digital marketing.
With google alerts tool, you can do the following:
- Follow new content for keywords that interest you.
- Monitor competitors and see what they're doing.
- Follow what people are saying about your site, your brand, or your products.
- Get backlinks to your site.
- Monitor if the digital products you sell are being posted illegally.
- Find Guest Post opportunities for your site.
- Plus dozens of other useful things.
If you have tried or used the Google Alerts tool, share with us in the comments how you can benefit from it.
