Google Alerts is a useful service provided by Google whereby Blog article addresses and short summaries are delivered via email, enabling a one-click interface to reach the information.

You can set up your account using your Google account by going here: http://www.google.com/alerts

If you do not have a Google account, you can get one when you click on ’sign in’ at the top on the right hand side. If you’ve never used Google services before, you might want to avail yourself of the opportunity - I use the Webmaster tools, which include the uploading of sitemaps, really useful if you want to get all your web pages crawled by Google so you can get search engine traffic. There’s also the Reader for RSS feeds, always useful so that your favourite Blogs can be read from your Google account without going to the Blog.

Of course, you can also manage your Adsense/Adwords facilities, your Blogger account, YouTube and Feedburner from one place - I find it very convenient.

Google Alerts has a huge readership, and so being visible on Blogs referred by Google Alerts is important. While many of them are ‘nofollow’, it is still useful to visit the Blogs and comment as soon after the email lands as possible, that way you will be among the first commenters and visible to all others who come after. If your comment is intelligent and adds some value, you will get traffic - the sheer size of the Google readership guarantees that.

On ‘dofollow’ Blogs there is always the additional benefit of getting backlinks, and I use the Quick Search Status Toolbar to get a heads up regarding which are and which aren’t: http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus

It tells you the Google Page Rank,Alexa Ranking, and highlights ‘nofollow’ links. This does not alter my decision - in most cases I comment anyway. If I’m there I may as well make the most of the time…

But get Google Alerts to learn and get news, not just for traffic - in every way, you will benefit!

The target to aim for, of course, is to get your own Blog article published in Google Alerts - just imagine the traffic!

Here to Help,

Derek
(just call me D!)