The rapid growth of cutting-edge technologies has allowed us to expand the limits of marketing. For example, using Google Alerts, we can check the web for information relevant to our business or competitors and all industries.
Let’s dig deeper into this subject to discover what exactly is “Google Alerts,” how it functions, how to create this service and how it could benefit your company to the next level.
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What is Google Alerts ?
Google Alerts is an application created by the Mountain View giant: it lets you keep track of the web and identify pages with particular keywords and search terms you specify.
When someone mentions the subject of the message you entered or when someone mentions the query, The service will send messages and alerts directly to your email address. This means that you will be notified of every website with your search term. This will allow you to stay current on your most popular subjects.
Benefits of using Google alert
One of the advantages that come with making use of Google Alerts is that they are extremely flexible. You can monitor virtually everything you’d like to.
For marketers and small-sized business owners, there are some crucial uses to use Google Alerts that everyone should be doing at the very least. Here are a few of them:
1. Monitor Your Brand
Maintaining a close eye on your branding, the mentions you make, and your reputation is vital even for the tiniest of companies. Most of the time, customers won’t go directly to you for complaints about something unless you’ve specifically requested it, but they’ll discuss it on the internet.
Awareness of how your brand’s image is perceived will allow you to adopt the correct steps to continue improving.
2. Keep An Eye on the competition
A competitive analysis allows you to stay current with what the other players in your field are up to. It can help you learn about their services, products, and features to improve your sales strategies or get inspiration from their advertising campaigns.
It’s never a bad idea to be aware of what your competition is up to. Maybe they’ve been featured in a news report where they’ve been the subject of an investigation.
3. Monitor Relevant Topics
Monitoring topics related to your business and target audience can help you better grasp the industry you’re operating within. It will help you in creating relevant content and posts on social media to appeal to your target audience. You need to create an alert to a particular phrase or keyword related to the subject.
By being aware ASAP of the most important changes happening in your field, you will be able to respond and be more efficient in communicating. It’s also an excellent way to discover new content that can guide your strategy for content marketing.
Everyone doesn’t want to be the person who could not catch a crucial trend only to post about it three months later!
4. Social Monitoring and Listening
You’ve put a lot of time and energy into creating your presence on social networks and keeping it up to date. However, if you’re not actively listening and participating, you’re not even the majority of conversations. Set up alerts to give you a better understanding of online conversations and keep a watchful eye on the majority of conversations where your alerts are used.
Through monitoring the forums in your industry along with social networks like Reddit and Quora, You will be able to identify opportunities to interact with your area of expertise. For example, make a thoughtful message on a forum or a blog of someone else’s, or respond to relevant questions in groups for industry on social media websites. It is a great way to increase your brand’s exposure and show the importance of thought leadership in your field.
5. Keyword Monitoring
Making alerts for your most relevant keywords will allow you to keep track of how other users are using your keywords. In addition, this will allow you to track changes in your keyword, secondary and related keywords, as well as new areas and niches that might offer new business opportunities.
If you keep in mind the mentions of your most popular keywords, you will be able to keep track of what your competitors are doing and keep an eye out if they attempt to take over your best-performing keywords.
6. Link building
Backlinks are still among the factors that rank Google the highest. More than half of those in the SEO sector believe that building links “will have more of an impact on rankings in the next few years.”
Utilizing a Google tool like Alerts is a great option to build hyperlinks and improve your search engine ranking potential. You have to communicate with the website owners who are in charge of the platforms on which your company is mentioned. Then, ask for an appropriate hyperlink to your website. The majority of notifications you receive will have links to your website. But, about 50% percent of Internet announcements need you to convert them into links.
7. Follow Your Press Release Activity
Anyone who is within Press Relations knows that keeping up-to-date with Press releases is a huge hassle. Journalists aren’t often notified when they compose an article based on your press release, and no one can go through numerous news websites every day.
Utilizing the “News” filter, you could be the first to determine if a journalist is writing an article based on your press announcement.
How to Set Up a Google Alert
It takes one minute or less to create an alert on Google. Google Alert:
- Go to http://www.google.com/alerts
- Input the search phrase you’d like to follow.
- Select the type of results you’d like to be following (everything including news, blogs, videos, discussion, or even books).
- Decide how often you’d like to be updated (as it happens daily, every other day, or once weekly).
- Select if you would like “Only the best results” or “All results.”
- Select the email address that you would like your notifications delivered to, or you can create an account.
- Click “Create Alert.”
Strategies to use Google Alerts effectively
Google alerts have the potential to flood users with irrelevant data if the search criteria are too wide. Here are some strategies to filter noise in the result:
- Specific words Quotations (“”) provide the initial step to improve results. Using quotes around a word allows Google to not search at permutations. For instance, searching on “market” will also return to markets and marketing. If you search in the search field for “market,” it will only yield “market.”
- Specific phrases Quotation marks can do the same thing for words. For example, a search for plastic injection will seek out the words plastic and injection and give greater relevance to content that contains both. Searching for “plastic injection” will only result in results related to “plastic injection.”
- Site-specific Searching: The keyword can inform users of any new content posted on websites with great value, such as a trade newspaper, local magazine, or a well-known news aggregator. The keyword should be placed on the website directly before the name of the website, leaving an asterisk between.
- Negative Keywords: Placing a plus(-) sign before the word will eliminate it from the results. If a search on Web development results in numerous job listings on websites and you include the word -the job will filter any website with the three words.
Alternatives to Google Alerts
1. Sprout Social
Twitter / Sprout Social is an excellent choice with a focus on listening to social media. It also comes with tools that are able to scan the internet for mentions and news regarding your company. Even better, Sprout Social is easy to integrate with your already-established social networks. In addition, it offers actionable business insights to steer the conversation within your company.
2. Awario
An affordable solution to implement a solid method of social media listening.
Let’s begin by introducing Awario Awario, an application that gives you two worlds in one. It also allows users to engage with specific mentions, providing them with detailed analytics, all at a fair cost!
When you set an alert for social listening, Awario provides a variety of filters to help make your search more precise. For example, you can choose the location, language, and source of mentions (Awario tracks Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, news sites, blogs, and the internet).
3. Meltwater
Meltwater is an extremely powerful monitoring tool for companies. The company employs a sophisticated AI-driven interface to produce more comprehensive results that offer an enhanced level of detail analysis while also reducing background noise from irrelevant data.
4. Social Searcher
Free tool to search for brand mentions in real time.
Google Alerts’ main appeal may be that it’s completely free. If you don’t have the funds for investment in a social-listening tool within your budget, Social Searcher is a good option. It’s akin to Google Alerts 2.0, and it doesn’t only notify you each time you see your keywords mentioned across the internet and provide statistics about the frequency of your mentions.
The platform you use will determine the results.
For example, social Searchers can find social posts five years older.
 It lets you browse the internet and identify websites that have certain keywords or search terms you have set.
When someone mentions the subject of the notice you submitted (or the question), the system will send alerts and notifications at your address. This means that you will be notified of every website with your search term. This will allow you to remain up-to-date with your most popular topics.
Summary
Google Alerts is among the most simple tools social media managers or marketers can utilize. It’s also crucial to know the opinions of people about your business on the internet. There’s no reason not to use Google Alerts.
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