Relevant backlinks are the pillars of a well-ranked website though it requires a lot of effort and some great pitches on your part to get a well-established website interested in your content and offer you space on its page. Thus for the sake of making it easy, Google has officially launched Google Alerts for link building.
Since Google is the most relevant search engine in the world whose database further offers millions of web pages, it is easy to find link opportunities from their large pool of websites with the new tool Google Alerts.
What is Google Alerts?
Since everyone out there using this new tool continues to represent Google Alerts for link building as one of the easiest ways to get new backlinks ideas, one must clearly understand what exactly it is.
In simpler terms, Google Alerts is a tool that allows a person to create notifications on a particular topic or a keyword. Thus, the tool helps you to stay alert on the possible link building opportunities by offering you notifications regarding the same. You will get notified via your email about any potential website that you can use for link building.
How to Use Google Alerts for Link Building
To start using Google Alerts, all you have to do is open the Google Alerts and log in at the top right corner with your Gmail account.
For instance, you want to make alerts for link building, so, type in just that in the box above. Now before submitting create alerts, the window offers an alert preview for you, making you aware of how the notifications will be shown to your email.
Before clicking the create alert option by giving your Gmail address, you can also customize the settings according to your requirements, to do this, click on the “show options” drop-down menu just next to the create alert button and check out the default settings.
You can further customize the settings according to the language you want to receive alerts for, a particular region and more. Though, the default settings are good to go as well.
After you have customized your options, all you have to do is click on the “create alert” button. Now, once a day, you will receive an email in your Gmail account with multiple websites using the same word you have created alerts for.
One thing you have to understand while using Google alerts for link building is to create an alert using quotation marks. The quotation market syndicated google that you are searching for websites that use the “exact phrase” and not just random two words here and there.
For instance, if you create an alert for link building, the email will offer you a list of websites with occurrences of words like links as well as building which certainly, won’t do you any good.
So, with quotation marks, the alerts you will receive in your email will include a list of websites that use the particular phrase like “link building”.
You can also use Google alerts for creating alerts of multiple words without the “quotation marks”. For instance, you want to create alerts for content related to digital marketing images. Then, instead of creating alerts for “digital marketing images”, which is the phrase very unlikely to turn up in the websites, create alert for “digital marketing” images, where the email once forwarded to your email account will feature the websites using the word digital marketing and related IMAGES on that.
Multiple Google Alerts for Link Building Practices:
Now, creating google alerts for a particular keyword or topic is not enough. You can create multiple Google Alerts for creating ample options for link building. You can further create alerts for the following:
Your Domain- Create a Google Alert for your domain name and get an insight on how websites are linking to you.
Your Brand Name- One can also create an alert for their brand name and determine the websites that are using your name in their posts or articles for link building options.
Your Services or Product: Create an alert for your product or the services you offer, so as to understand the market.
Your Focus Keyword: Creating an alert for a specific focus keyword will help you get ample link building opportunities with well-established and relevant websites.
Industry Related Terms: You can also create Google Alerts for link building on the terms related to your niche so that they can give you easy link building opportunities.
Since the creating multiple Google Alerts to be sent to your email once in a day will flood your inbox, one is recommended to use a separate email just for this so as to keep the practices and results in separate emails.
Understanding the Competition:
Using Google Alerts for link building is not the only parameter associated with this tool. You can also have an insight into your competitor's backlinks and other strategies by creating an alert specific to their niche or their names. You will be notified whenever any website is linking to your competitors, thus bookmarking the website for future linking opportunities will be a good idea.
You can further make use of other SEO tools like Ubersuggest, SEMRush or more to understand the SEO tactics used by the websites that have been listed in your email by Google Alerts. You will have to get in touch with the relevant websites for the link building opportunities. You can also make use of the tool Hunter to know the relevant websites contact information.
Google Alerts for Guest Posts Opportunities:
Since Guest Posting is one of the sure-shot tactics of link building, Google Alerts can offer you major website ideas for that. All you have to do is create a Google Alert for the guest posting websites. Since creating an alert for “write for us” or “contribute by writing” will no doubt offer you multiple websites inviting writers to write for them, it sure will have a lot of competition when it comes to pitching.
Instead, you can use the exact phrase like “guest post by”, which will offer you results on the posts that have been already submitted on the websites. This way, you can get the exact contact details of the website and its name that offers guest posting opportunities.
