Money and Business How to use Google Alerts

Money and Business 

How to use Google Alerts

Money and Business 

How to use Google Alerts

What is Google Alerts?

It is a tool developed by Google that enables website owners and marketers to get alerts periodically when certain content is published in a domain. It provides additional features related to tracking blogs or sites, to learn about the latest topics, which helps to follow the popular ones and improve search engines.

The Google Alerts tool is completely free, but it is worth noting that the content alerts are limited to only the Google search engine; This means that the user will not be able to track the content in other search engines such as Bing or Yandex. In addition, it does not provide access to old content.

The importance of using Google Alerts

The Google Alerts tool contributes to improving the marketing strategy followed by your site, through several features, the most important of which are:

Search Engine Optimization

Website owners always search for the top of Google search results, this is normal to increase site visits and enhance its reach to potential customers. However, this requires knowledge of the keywords and topics that the audience is interested in, which is what the tool provides, in order to target specific keywords and work on them, from here you can improve the search engines for your site.

Promote content marketing

Sometimes the task of coming up with new and suitable ideas to improve the content plan for your site or blog is difficult, so it is important to look for ways to help you come up with creative ideas to publish effective articles and topics.

Google Alerts helps you get a flow of ideas for your industry. It also enables you to follow specific keywords, through which you learn about the topics in which sites employ this word. This will help you target the same keyword in different axes.

Track competitors

By entering the link to the competing website or store, you will be able to easily identify the content that competitors publish first. This will help you to be constantly aware of any updates or developments related to the competing market, to work to maintain your brand's ability to compete strongly, by creating new features or improving other existing ones.

Achieving the scoop for news sites

If you have a news website, you will realize that Google Alerts has a lot of features that enable you to be on the front line in publishing reliable news. Once you follow the necessary news keywords, you will receive direct notifications as soon as any new news is published. To verify its authenticity quickly, and achieve the well-deserved scoop.

How to use Google Alerts

Google Alerts is one of the most user-friendly content tracking tools out there, as it doesn't have the many options found in other tools. Go directly to the tool link on the Internet, then select the email you want to use, and if you do not have a Google account registered in the browser, in this case you must log in to it.

Get to know the opinions of the public

Google Alerts enables you to know all the opinions and suggestions of customers regarding a brand or a product, and it can also be used to know the opinions of the public about a particular person. This will help you identify the things that consumers prefer, and the problems they are looking for solutions to in a product, for example, which gives you the opportunity to create your own competitive advantage, by providing what they are looking for from you.

Now enter the keyword or the name of the site you want to track, then click on Show options. After that, you will see a set of new options, which allow you to customize content notifications, namely

1how often: This option allows you to specify the appropriate time to receive notifications, and gives you three options, the first enables you to receive content notifications as soon as you archive it in Google, the second option collects content on a daily basis and sends it to you in one notification, and the last option is to specify receiving content on a weekly basis .

2. Sources: Select here the right content source for you, from a range of options such as news sites, blogs, videos and e-books, knowing that social media platforms are not supported in this tool.

3. Language: Choose the language of the content you want to follow, as the tool allows you to choose a range of languages.

4. region: Select the region or country that you want to follow the content of, this will be useful when following competitors in a specific country or when trying to expand into new markets.

5. How many: This option is for filtering notifications by choosing whether to receive notifications of all results, or only the best.

6. deliver to: Enter the email address you want to receive notifications from. There is also an option to send alerts via RSS.

After completing all the settings, you must click on Create Alert, after which you will start receiving notifications regarding updates to the content that you want to know on the web.

4 secrets to using Google Alerts effectively

It doesn't just end with keywords or a site in general, there are a bunch of ways to make using Google Analytics more effective and useful. Among these secrets:

Follow up on a keyword on a site

You may not want to keep track of all the content a website or blog posts and are looking for more customizationFor example, you may follow the Fiverr blog to find out about new articles related to e-marketing, but the blog deals with many areas other than this classification, from here you can, through the Google Alerts tool, follow articles that deal with this term only on the blog. All you have to do is write the desired keyword in parentheses, then add the link of the site from which you want to receive notifications.

Follow the content of a group of sites

This option is suitable for following the content of more than one site at once, rather than getting notifications for each site separately. Also, this option is very useful for the owners of news sites, as they will get breaking news from trusted sites first in their mailbox.

To follow a group of sites together, enter the links of the sites you want to follow and separate them with a “|” sign, with each link preceded by the word “site”. The result will be as follows:

Track questions posted online

You can track questions related to a topic that interests you. For example, suppose you sell mobile phones, especially Samsung phones, and you want to receive a notification whenever someone asks how you can use a type to find out and answer their problems. Simply write “how* to use a Samsung phone”.

The word “method” here is equivalent to the English term “how to”, so the word will differ depending on the question, it may be “why”, “when”, “where” and so on.

Content filtering through intext

Sometimes there are some big topics or areas, and it's hard to follow all aspects of them. It searches for topics that deal with a specific word only. From here, you can filter the results that you get through the filtering feature provided by the Google tool. This is done by writing “intext” and then the desired word or term.

3 important tips when using Google Alerts

The ease of using Google Alerts makes it common to make some mistakes that may negatively affect the efficiency of using the tool for you, so here are three important tips to follow:

Determine your goal of using the Google Alerts tool, as many website owners use the tool without clear goals for tracking or the like. Want to know popular words or content? Or would you like to take a look at competitors' content? Or maybe you want to know the location of your site's name in some content results. Goal setting will help you achieve clear and analysable results.

Avoid using general keywords, as the number of sites that will use these words will be huge, which will flood your inbox with a lot of messages, and you will find that you delete one message after another.

The Google Alerts tool is not suitable for searching for content posted on social media such as Facebook and Instagram, which means that you should look for a tool that allows you to do this, such as the buzzsumo tool.

Finally, the Google Alerts tool contributes to facilitating the search journey and enhancing content for website owners, and allows you to identify the content published on the web for free. So do not hesitate to take advantage of this tool to enhance your website marketing strategy