Do you know what is being said about your business online? If you just do a Google search now and again for your business name and check out the first few pages of results, you’re missing out.
Tracking your online mentions is a very important part of search engine optimization for many reasons. Here’s two of the most important ones:
- If someone writes a good or bad review of your business, you’ll find out right away. If it’s a bad review, you have some time to do damage control (contact them, make it better) before it ends up ranking #1 for your business name.
- If someone mentions your business name but doesn’t link to your website, here’s a great opportunity to ask for a link!
Setting up a Google Alert for your business is free and easy. It will take about 5 minutes of your time, so what are you waiting for?
1. Visit the Google Alerts page (link opens in a new window).
2. Enter your business name in the Search Terms box.
3. Click the Preview Results link and check the results – do they look right?
4. Select Everything from the Type drop down menu. This means that you’ll get search results, blog results, video – any mentions that Google digs up.
5. Next, choose How Often you’d like to receive the results. I recommend Once A Day – just enough to keep on top of the mentions, but not so much that you’ll feel overwhelmed.
6. For Volume, choose Everything. I only recommend Only The Best Results if you have an exceeding common business name. Otherwise, mentions may be overlooked occasionally.
7. Enter Your Email and click Create Alert.
Once you’ve set up your alert, come back and let me know in the comments below if you found anything interesting!
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