When it comes to organizing content, Google Alerts is a free tool with great potential. When properly configured, the application can keep you up to date with the latest trends regarding topics and relevant keywords on the Internet, which can help you develop your content strategy.
What Google Alerts is for
Google Alerts is a content notification system that notifies you by email when there are updates about a keyword. You can set up alerts to be sent daily, weekly, or monthly. There are even options for real-time tracking of the use of different keyword structures. When used correctly, it is a great ally to improve the ranking of your page and your articles.
You can organize content in Google Alerts and set up monitoring for different parameters. From your brand to competitor publications, the most relevant topics, and press releases that include in their content words or topics that affect your website.
How to set up alerts in Google Alerts
The setup process is very simple. Just go to the official page at google.com/alerts and enter the terms you want to monitor. It’s important to set up the Gmail account where the alerts will be sent. You must use a Google email account; otherwise, the alert system will not be fully configured.
The full configuration of Google Alerts allows you to set the frequency of alerts (daily, as soon as a change happens, weekly); the sources (automatic, news, blogs, web, videos, books, discussions, finance); the language; and the number of links (the best, all results).
Advantages of using Google Alerts
It is a completely free tool, with no secrets or hidden costs. Its setup is very simple, flexible, and divided into modules to ensure precise control. No surprises and with precise, dynamic tracking of what’s happening on the web and social networks with your favorite topics and keywords.
On the other hand, Google Alerts has some limitations. The Google Alerts tool is not perfect. There are some points that are not covered, making it an application with areas for improvement.
For one thing, it does not provide alerts for social media mentions. The results only belong to indexed pages, but there are pages that, for various reasons, are not indexed and may contain the information we are looking for.
Finally, and thinking about improvements to consider for the application, it only shows mentions and updates of the term, but there is no analytical work. To do more in-depth marketing work, it is important to have more complex analytical and comparative data.
