7 Ways That You Should Be Using Google Alerts For IM

If you aren't familiar with Google Alerts, it's an instant email notification of Google newly identifying a specific keyword phrase (that you specify) from across the Web.

Many warriors may already be using Google Alerts (Google Alerts) in your IM businesses but have you considered all of these ways of using one of Google's most valuable free services:

[1] Find out when your site, specific (new) pages or your articles have been indexed.

This is a great way of measuring which method gets your sites/articles indexed fastest. Is it Digg? RSS feed submissions to FeedAgg, Feedage or Autopinger etc? Craigslist, Gumtree? Find out with Google Alerts? It also also allows you to check whether a Google Alert matches the latest indexing in Google Webmaster tools or by typing site:mydomain.com into Google.

[2] Looking for backlinks related to your niche?

Type your main keyword phrase/s into Google Alerts "in quotes" and see what other sites Google is picking up for you to possibly comment on. Just check their Page Rank in Firefox with SEO Quake and make sure your comment (if there's a place for it on that site) is on a 'dofollow' site (View page source code to check). Blog sites are so common now that there's a good possibility of a blog comment backlink.

[3] Check on how your articles are being used by other webmasters.

I have found my articles 'somehow' missing my Bio Box when used on other sites and was able to follow up with the owners of those sites. I could have found those sites through other means but Google Alerts delivered the links straight to my email inbox.

[4] Get article ideas from news stories in your niche or find other relevant articles that you can ethically use as syndicated content on your site.

As per the above point, there are other ways of finding this content but when Google Alerts delivers links to news stories and articles across the web on the keyword phrases that you specify, it can save you plenty of time.

[5] Related to the above point, Google Alerts can well, 'alert', you to a new trend in a niche by picking up breaking news stories.

That can allow you create a spinoff site, write targeted articles on that new trend, start/expand a PPC campaign on a new term etc.

[6] Find possible partner sites, JV partners, affiliate programs or competitors site features that you can model.

When you start a Google Alert and start visiting those links, you'll soon see site features and even design elements worth copying.

[7] Keep a check on how your (pen)name or product title is being discussed on the Web.

Review sites, conduit blogs etc can sometimes have factual errors that Google Alerts can give you a chance at fixing when you have it monitor your product name or (pen)name.

Final Note: Make sure that your phrase is in quotes in Google Alerts otherwise you'll get flooded with vaguely related 'broad search' terms (it's like the External Keyword Tool in that respect).

Also, if you aren't using it yet, Rank Checker from SEO Tools (Rank Checker - Track Google, Yahoo! Search, & Microsoft Rankings Free) can give you an instant SERP snapshot of your site portfolio across Google, Yahoo and MSN for terms that you choose - though it can't handle long URLs so forget about tracking Ezinearticles pages, Amazon book pages etc; short URLS only but still an amazing free tool.

Enjoy!