Google Alerts Tips
If you feel like you have never taken full advantage of what Google Alerts can offer you, it’s a good thing you’re reading this article. We’ve created a list of tips and tricks that you can use with this tool and that can take your business or competition tracking to a whole new level.
Google Alerts Tips
How do Google Alerts work?
Google Alerts are a tracking service that can send out information about any search you set them up for via email. It’s free to use for anyone and it essentially aggregates any news, posts, or trends as per the keywords that you have set up.
The best thing about this tool is that you are allowed to create up to 1,000 alerts. No matter if you run a digital marketing or any other type of agency or you’re just looking to monitor your name (personal brand), that’s usually more than enough.
How to manage Google Alerts
Setting up an alert is very easy, so almost anyone can do it. All you have to do is to go to the Google Alerts homepage, enter a keyword into the search box, and then set the variables as per the results you want to be shown.
Furthermore, you can set up the frequency of the alerts that you receive in your email inbox, the sources, the language and region for which you want to track the keywords, and even how many alerts you want to get. Finally, you put in your email address, and you’re all set.
Set up Google job Alerts
You can use the same criteria to perfect your job hunting process, especially if you’re interested in a particular position, and you don’t want to miss it. Have your resume ready, and you will receive new job openings via email every day or every couple of days, depending on what you feel comfortable with.
Instead of a particular keyword, you can use the term ‘job’ and then write down the names of the companies you’re interested in working for. You can even set up an ‘everything’ alert for the name of that particular employer, and the Google Alerts system will tell you when there are new jobs open for that company.
Use quotation marks if the name of the firm you want to get hired at is made of several words (example: “General Electric”). Type in ‘or’ between several employer names so that you receive alerts in a single email about all of their job openings.
You can also customize your Google Alerts as per a specific location, a specific industry, or even the names of people you’d like to work with or for.
How to set Google Alerts for business
Monitor business mentions
If you want to know what people are saying about your brand, you can create a Google Alert for your company or for the products you make or sell. You can get real-time info about both via email.
It’s also essential to keep an eye on the reviews that your company or products receive from customers. You can use the term ‘Brand’ + broken or ‘Brand’ + worst to see what negative reviews you’ve acquired and then get in touch with those customers or investigate so that you fix your issues.
Find link building opportunities
If you track your brand name, you’ll not only be directed to the articles that have mentioned it, but you’ll also come across a myriad of link building opportunities. You can personally send out emails to the writers of the posts or the people managing that site and ask them whether they wouldn’t mind adding a link to your brand name.
Some sites might not be that responsive, or they might not want to add your link without you having to pay for a fee. It’s up to you to decide whether the expense makes sense, also taking into account that paying for links is against most search engines’ policies, and it, of course, depends on that site’s ranking, too.
Track your competitors
There’s nothing stopping you from creating various alerts for the names of the companies that are in your industry and that basically sell the same types of products.
You can find out who’s linking to them, see what customers are saying about them, and you can learn from their experiences. If they get negative reviews for their services or something, in particular, you will be able to prevent the same thing from happening with your brand.
Find new customers
You can use questions instead of keywords to see what people are looking for in terms of the services you offer or the products you manufacture or sell. Question and answer websites can include requests such as ‘Where can I find green leather jackets?’.
If it just so happens that that’s what you sell, you can easily provide an answer to that question.
How to turn off Google Alerts
You can turn off Google Alerts by simply deleting it. Go to the Google Alerts homepage and then click the ‘delete’ button that shows up right next to the alert that you no longer want to receive notifications for. It’s even easier to delete Google public alerts from the email you have received as you can merely unsubscribe to it.
Craig Campbell
I am a Glasgow based SEO expert who has been doing SEO for 22 years.
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