Use Google Alerts to keep track of your targeted niche market
There is a lot of buzz about this alerting service from Google called Google Alerts. Basically this is an useful and free service from the biggest search engine company in the world and what it does it is, you key into Google Alerts the terms or keywords you wish to monitor, together with an email address of yours. So seat back and wait for Google to automatically “alert” you when a specific topic, keyword or search term you wish to keep track appears somewhere in the news, on the web, or in discussion groups.
Right, you can see this is very good way to spy on the particular niche market you are interested in. For example, you are an authority figure in the field of video animation and you wish to know whether your name is mentioned in the cyberspace in those niche blogs or forums. Hence when those pages are found by Google, you will be alerted through emails, and you can check those new pages out to see if you name has been quoted.
I’ve also entered my name, Web site URL, and keywords and phrases that relate to my job nature. Now I receive daily alerts telling me when and where those terms appear. These alerts can make you aware of new links to your site, when someone uses an article you have posted, or if bloggers and others are talking about you.
You can also use Google Alerts to build some backlinks.
Enter your desired search term. Once you receive alerts about your term, you can go to these pages/links and request a link from the site’s owner or in the case of blogs you can post a comment with a link back to your site. You can easily some backlinks everyday and I’m sure with this method, you can reduce the time spent to search for right places to link to.
Besides, you can also use Google Alerts to solidify your place as an expert in your niche. Just follow the alerts and go to the urls to join in the online participation about the topic. This will allow people to know you as the expert in this area.
In conclusion, with Google Alerts, you don’t have to go out there on the web and manually monitor every change that occurs in your area of focus, niche or industry. Google automatically scrubs the web for the latest news stories, web results, blog posts, videos and even the latest blog posts in your niche. These are then automatically sent to your email address daily, weekly or as soon as they become available, depending on your preset preferences.
What better way is there to keep an eye on your industry and be always up to date with the happenings in it? This way, you can update your own website and blogs or send your list of subscribers hints about these latest trends.