Google Alerts can help you monitor the mention of your name, business, and even your competitor. The service is simple to use, and you are only required to enter a word or phrase into the service. Afterward, you’ll receive email notifications once Google detects a new mention of the word or phrase written.
Besides building your confidence, setting up Google Alerts can open multiple opportunities for your business. With a well set up service, Google Alerts can help you with brand building, link building, and collaborations, among other possibilities.
It’s also a straightforward and decent tool to use, especially for beginners.
What are Google Alerts?
Google Alerts is a tracking tool that gives you immediate information concerning a specific keyword or phrase you want to track. It’s a free service and delivers this information via email, which provides you with a clear understanding of your brand’s reputation from the user’s point of view.
The Amount of Google Alerts You Can Receive
Currently, you can receive up to 1,000 Google Alerts on your Gmail account. Note that you can’t set up Google Alerts without a Gmail account. The good news is that Gmail accounts are also free and easy to set up.
How to Setup Google Alerts
Setting up Google Alerts isn’t a challenging process, but it does require some comprehensive steps. To help you through this, below are the steps to follow when setting up Google Alerts.
1. Visit ‘google.com/alerts.’
2. Type your preferred term or phrase to track
3. Below the search box, select the ‘Show options’ button and choose how often you’d like to receive the alerts
4. On the same tab, you can also choose the:
- Source for your alerts
- Language and Region
- Amount of results you’d want to receive
- Delivery address
5. The final step is just clicking the ‘Create alert’ button
Email remains the most typical medium for most people to receive Google Alerts. If you are tracking rarely used keywords, then expect occasional alerts. But if you are tracking several popular alerts, your email inbox might easily overwhelm you.
The good is that the ‘Inbox by Gmail’ feature is developed to solve that problem. It does this by collectively storing all the alerts in one bundle. Once held there, you can choose to either archive or read the alerts.
And if you aren’t interested in the alerts, you can mark the entire bundle ‘done’ and progress with your work. The ‘Inbox by Gmail’ feature allows you to customize each bundle’s notifications. A process better explained by Jack Wallen’s ‘How to create your own bundles in Google inbox.’
The Inbox by Gmail feature is now available in default to Gmail accounts, schools, and nonprofits. To try it, you can visit ‘inbox.google.com’ or download the iOS or Android mobile app.
To get more out of Google Alerts, type more than just your preferred keyword to track. For the geeks, Google can also send you alerts in an RSS reader. But for the best results using this approach, we recommend the Freedly or the Inoreader service.
The Importance of Google Alerts
1. Monitor Your Brand’s Negative Mentions
Setting up Google Alerts and using it gives you information on how people interact with your brand’s products and services.
2. Target Better Keywords
With Google Alerts, you can understand what the customer’s in your niche are searching for. This gives you comprehensive information on the best keywords to target.
3. Track Your Competitor
Google Alerts also helps you to track your competitor’s progress to understand their marketing tactics better. With such information, you can leverage the competition process in various ways.
4. New Content Ideas
Knowing what people are looking for using Google Alerts helps you develop new and better content ideas. This places you at an advantaged position and you stand to succeed generating more traffic to your websites.
5. Security
Piracy is a common thing nowadays, and individually tracking that is impossible. Google Alerts is the best at monitoring your intellectual property against piracy. It will easily track websites and individuals and alert you in case they have pirated your property. When you have the culprits, it is easy for you to take action against them.
Final Thoughts
As you’ve seen, Google Alerts is an excellent service for tracking and monitoring your business, keywords, and competitors. Because it’s free, beginners can benefit from the amount of useful information provided by Google Alerts.
