In my previous post on creating a blog network, one of my readers left a comment about how he stays in tune with his niche by using Google Alerts. I hadn’t heard of using Google Alerts before this, but I have looked into it and it seems to be a great way to keep up to date with new subjects within your niche.

By subscribing to Google Alerts, whenever Google lists new entries within their search engine related to your chosen search terms, they will send you an e-mail with a link to the new information. In this way, you don’t have to trawl the net for new posts or articles, they are sent straight to your inbox. Here’s how to subscribe:

- Go to Google Alerts, and enter the search term(s) you are interested in. In my case, I use the search terms ‘blog traffic’ and ‘build blog traffic’.

- Choose the type of information you are after. You can choose between “News”, “Blogs”, “Web”, “Video”, “Groups”, or all of them (“Comprehensive”).

- Choose how often you would like to receive alerts, whether it’s as it happens, once a day or once a week.

- Enter your e-mail address you would like the alerts to be sent to.

And that’s it!

I think this is a really easy way to keep abreast of new information as and when it becomes available. It’s similar to RSS feeds in principle, the major difference being that you receive information from different blogs or websites with one Google Alert. With RSS feeds you have to subscribe to more than one at a time to get more sources of information within your subject.

There is also a Google Alerts FAQ Section, which may help to answer any other questions you may have about receiving Google Alerts.

Related blog post(s):

Blogging - Love Your Subject!
Adding An RSS Feed To Your Blog
Google Pagerank - What’s Yours?

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