Using Google Alerts for PPC Research
Do you want to receive alerts every time your names, your company, or your most important keywords are mentioned somewhere on the web? Google alerts is a useful web monitoring tool and lets you know exactly that.
Let’s read more about it.
1.
Google Alerts
Google Alerts is a powerful monitoring tool, however, a few marketers use it to its full potential.
It lets you receive alerts whenever someone mentions your name, your company, or your important keywords.
Keep on reading to learn more about it.
Google alerts is one of the best Google Apps that lets you receive alerts about your brands and it only takes a few minutes to start using this free service.
The question here lies
Why would you want to set up Google Alerts?
The answer is simple!
With over 267 million individual visitors, Google is undoubtedly the hottest search engine in America alone.
Now, imagine the impact you can have in your region with the help of Google Alerts.
Thus, with Google being the preferred search engine worldwide, you ought to use it for your PPC ads.
When you think of digital marketing and google, Google Alerts is not the first tool that comes to your mind.
Let me show you how Google Alerts work and how it can help you to run your PPC campaigns in an effective way.
The following are the reasons you will want to monitor the web using Google Alerts, as well as a step-by-step guide to getting started.
What is Google Alerts?
Google Alerts is a free monitoring tool that notifies you whenever Google indexes a new page of any type of relevant content.
This relevant content can be the one that contains a keyword or phrase you specify.
For instance, you can ask Google to send you an alert whenever someone mentions your company’s name online.
Or you can use it to track what keywords your competitors are using more frequently.
Moreover, the best part about using this notification app is that it is free to set up and easy to get going.
Thus, if you are a marketer, then it is worth giving this app a try.
However, it is important to note that Google Alerts has its limit.
You will not be able to see any analytics details like how often someone mentions your brand’s names, and how much they are increasing.
Thus, you will still need tools like Google Analytics to help measure the KPIs and other metrics.
Moreover, you cannot track social media posts and you will need an alternative tool to track how often someone mentions your brand or company.
To put it all in simple words, Google Alerts come in handy, however, it is not the only tool you should use to track the presence of your brand online, track keywords, or monitor trends for PPC campaigns.
2.
Setting up Google Alerts
Setting up Google Alerts is an easy step and takes a few minutes to set up.
For setting up your account follow the steps below to receive alerts about your brand.
Step 1: Visit the Official Website of Google Alerts
In the first step, you will have to visit google.com/alerts.
However, if you already have not done this step, then you can sign in with the Google Account to want to receive alerts at.
Step 2: Types of Notifications and Search Items
In this step, you will have to decide what notifications you want to receive and the type of search term on the top bar.
Let consider that for Markfiniti I would want to set up notifications for “digital marketing”.
I will start receiving different notifications after setting up the sources I want to track.
Consider another example:
You want to set up notifications for the term “influencer marketing“.
After this, you will have to decide which sources you want to track.
Remember, as mentioned above, Google Alerts cannot monitor social media posts for you, however, you can choose from other sources like books, videos, or blog posts.
Step 3: Decide the Frequency of Notifications
In this step, you will have to decide how often you want to receive Google Alerts.
You can either opt for instant alerts or can get updates once a day or once per week.
Thus, it all depends on what works for you and your convenience.
Step 4: Selecting Language
Another thing you can set up is that if you want to receive google alerts for posts in certain languages then simply selecting the language from the drop-down menu will help.
Moreover, if you want to monitor posts for a certain country or relevant to it, then you can limit your search to that one territory.
Step 5: Receiving ‘all’ results
In this step, you will choose between receiving ‘all’ results or just the ones Google finds or deems most relevant to your search query.
For instance, if you are using a broad keyword, then you might wanna restrict alerts to the highest-ranking results.
Afterward, you can choose where you want to receive the alerts, either to your email address or an RSS feed.
Step 6: Completing the Process
After setting up the parameters, simply click on ‘Create Alert” to complete the process.
Lastly, you will start receiving alerts for the search term you have set up for every time.
Interestingly, you can run up to 1,000 Google alerts simultaneously, which is more than enough.
However, if you need more than you can always set up a second account to run them through.
Moreover, if you want to delete or update Google alert, you can simply go back to google.com/alert and click on the relevant option.
Now let’s learn about using Google Alerts for your PPC ads Campaign.
3.
Using Google Alerts for PPC Ads
So after making your Google Alerts accounts, let’s learn how you can effecy=tively use it for your PPC ads.
The following are the 5 ways you can use the power of Google Alerts for your next PPC campaign.
Let’s discuss them in detail.
1# Find out the Latest Trends in your Industry or Niche
Although evergreen topics and content matters, however, trends are hugely important for an industry or niche.
More importantly, if you want to identify what these new trends are and how you can incorporate them into your PPC ads is the ideal situation.
How can Google Alerts help?
You can easily use it to monitor blogs and authoritative websites in your niche for new content.
Moreover, you can scan for new posts to identify possible trends and capitalize on them before anyone else in your industry or niche does.
To set up Google Alerts like these all you have to do is simply set alerts for “[company’s name] + blog”.
For instance, you can track ‘Healthline, ‘WebMD’ and so on.
However, if you want to track general trends in a broader niche like email marketing, then you can use a wide search term like’ email marketing trend’s and ask Google to show the most relevant results and see what comes.
Learn more about SMS marketing and best practices here.
2# Identify New Topics to Target
While Google Alert is not a keyword research tool, however, you can use it to help identify new keywords and search terms to target through your PPC ad campaigns.
Consider the following example:
Consider you are selling different supplements and you are launching a new product to help people with Rheumatoid Arthritis.
You can set up Google Alerts to help identify whether people with RA are typing in search queries like ‘supplements for Rheumatoid Arthritis’ and ‘best supplements for RA’.
To start with it, you can simply set up an alert for these search terms.
The following are some examples of how you might write your keywords:
- “Dietary supplements” for Rheumatoid Arthritis
- ‘nest supplements’ for RA
Thus using quotations makes around certain keywords can help ensure that you will see results containing the exact phrase as well as any other words you might want to add.
However, if you do not get any alert then this means no one is searching for these keywords.
For this, you might want to rethink which keywords you are targeting for your PPC ads.
On the other hand, if these keywords are popular, then it is worth spending large money to have your ads show up for these search queries.
3# Recieving Alerts About Your Brands or Yourself
Understanding your target audience is crucial while you are creating a PPC ad campaign.
Learning who is talking about your brand and what demographics are you reaching are both important factors.
Thus, once you understand the answers to the above questions and others like these. you can have a more targeted and effective PPC ad.
How can Google Alerts help?
Simply by allowing you to track whenever someone mentions your name or the name of your brand or company online.
Once you start tracking these mentions, you can learn more about who is engaging with your brand and what they expect from you.
Again this one is a simple process.
Set up 2 individual alerts for this purpose.
One for your business name and one for your personal name.
Use what you discover to decide which demographics to target with the PPC ads you want to go forward with.
4# Monitors your Competitors
What people say and think about you matters to you and your brand.
However, it is just as crucial to know:
- what your target audience is saying about your competitors
- how well they are performing online
Now you may be wondering as to why does the competitor research matters while you are building a PPC campaign?
The answer is simple.
By understanding the competitor’s strengths and weaknesses, you can distinguish your own brand and build the most effective PPC ads.
Thus, you can monitor your competitors or you can search for announcements using phrases like ‘competitor name + product announcement’.
You can use them to inform your product launch campaigns and PPC ads and stand out from the crowd.
Learn how to choose a domain name for your website here.
5# Track and Manage Negative Reviews
No business or brand likes to get negative reviews, however, let’s face a simple fact.
Negative reviews are a commercial reality.
What’s more important is the fact that how you choose to handle those reviews and use the feedback to improve your business.
Moreover, 96% of consumers read your responses to negative reviews, thus, your answer matters.
How it matters from a PPC perspective?
Even if the target audience clicks through your PPC ads, they will not buy from you if they are viewing multiple negative reviews and no feedback from you or the customer service team.
For this, you will have to monitor for brand mentions.
However, there is a chance that you can or will miss negative reviews tracked this way, especially if you are a popular brand with multiple mentions.
After setting up Google Alerts for reviews only, it looks like:
[brand name] +intitle:review
According to a study, 72% of the customers read Google reviews before making a purchase, thus if you are running great PPC ads, the review still matters.
It is also crucial you stay ahead of them if you want to get the most from your PPC Campaigns.
Learn more about Pay-per-click vs. SEO here.
Final Thoughts
If you plan on running a PPC campaign then you will know how important to search for your target audience and choose the right keywords. Google Alerts can help whether you are finding new and popular keywords or reaching popular trends with your industry or niche. It show options like a guest post on search engines and Google search as well.
However, it is important to keep in mind that it is not the only option to track your PPC performance.
Do comment in the section below and let us know what you want to learn more about.