Google Alerts are a great way to stay on top of new information being shared online. Using them can not only improve your business, it can also help make it easier for you to come up with content ideas for blog posts.

You can set Google Alerts for yourself and your business to see what others are saying about you. You can set alerts for your competitors to keep on top of what they’re doing. And you can set alerts for your keywords to see what information is being shared that might give you new ideas for posts of your own.

Google Alerts are easy to set and you can set your notifications to come as the news happens, once a day or once a week. You can also select where you’d like to receive alerts from including blogs, news outlets, and websites.

Steps to Set Up Google Alerts

1. Go to google.com/alerts
2. Enter a search term you’d like to track. Google Alerts will display a preview of the results. If you have a website associated with your Google account, it will pull that information and also ask you if you want to track yourself. Note: You will need a Google account to set up alerts.
3. Select “Show options” (below the search box). Choose how often you’d like to receive alerts, the sources you’d like to include in your results, your preferred language and region, how many alerts you’d like to receive, and where you’d like your emails delivered. Note: If you’re not sure what sources you’d like to receive alerts from, select “automatic” for all sources.
4. Once you’ve selected your preferences, click “Create Alert.”

The alert results will now be sent to the email you specified at the frequency you selected.

To create additional alerts, just follow the above steps for each keyword, person, company, or topic you’re interested in.

You can easily change your alerts or options at any time by going back to google.com/alerts and selecting an alert to edit or delete.

Know What Is Being Shared

Using Google Alerts can help you know what’s being shared online about you and your company to ensure that the links and information are correct. They can also help you monitor for hacks to your website or social media accounts.

As an added bonus, you can keep an eye on what your competitors are up to as well as generate new ideas for content on your own site using Alerts. You may even find some guest post and collaboration opportunities.

Time to Set It Up

If you haven’t set Google Alerts up yet, now is the time to do so.

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