Posts tagged as:

SEO

Google Alerts is so slow! Google Alerts is so fast!

by Adam Green on May 18, 2009

in Google Alerts, SEO

It’s funny how users interpret the behavior of software. I sometimes see complaints on Twitter that Google Alerts are way too slow.

alertspeed1

I also see people who are amazed at how fast it is.

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But it is the same software. Could the problem lie somewhere else? Here is a clue.

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That’s right. Google Alerts are a measurement of when Google indexes a site. I know people think that Google is God, and that it knows about all pages the instant they are created, if not earlier. The reality is that some sites are indexed faster than others. The difference is based on the quality of the site’s SEO.

Instead of complaining about Google, which is about as useful as complaining about the weather, you should start improving the SEO of your site, and use the speed of Google’s response to tell you how well you are doing with that job.

All you have to do is setup a Google Alert for your site, and see how long it takes for new pages to be indexed. This is done with the search term:
site:yoururl.com

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Show clients why they must manage their online reputation

by Adam Green on May 5, 2009

in AlertRank, Announcements, Google Alerts, Marketing, Reputation management, SEO, What's New, public relations

We just updated AlertRank to allow public accounts. This makes it a snap to share all your Google Alerts in a complete management interface with custom reporting. All you have to do is open the Alert Management tab, select the Public Account page, and click the check box to make your account public.

Public Google Alerts with AlertRank

We even give you a set of cool badges you can add to your site to show people how to find your alerts. I’ve added my own to this blog’s sidebar.

A public account lets anyone view all your alerts, sources, and analytics pages, but they can’t change any data or delete any alerts. The public account URL is http://www.alertrank.com/public/[username]. Mine is at:
http://www.alertrank.com/public/adam

Adam Green's public AlertRank account

Public accounts also let your visitors create custom PDF reports from your alerts. I created this PDF report by selecting all the results for the search term Google Alerts over the last 2 days. I also ordered them by the AlertRank quality score to show the most influential results first.

We think that public accounts are a great tool for online PR, SEO and marketing companies to sell their services. You can show a potential client exactly what is being said about them and their competitors on the Web. This really explains the need for an active reputation management program for every organization. It’s the classic case of show rather than tell.

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Google owns your reputation, and you must optimize it

May 3, 2009

I read a lot about Search Engine Optimization, and I keep seeing people make the same mistake. They view Google as a search engine, when it is really a reputation engine. When someone searches for a set of keywords, the implicit request is not “Show me something that matches these words.” They are asking for [...]

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5 Google Alerts tricks every webmaster must use

April 12, 2009

Randy Young on Twitter just asked me how he can track his website on Google Alerts. Great question, Randy. Here are some alerts  every webmaster should have active.
1. Your most important keywords. What words do you want people to be able to find you with on Google? You’ll get a much better idea of how [...]

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Why do your competitors have better position in Google search results?

April 6, 2009

With so much written about SEO, its easy to be overwhelmed. A simple solution is to learn from your competitors, and copy the tricks used by the ones that have the highest ranking in Google search results. The key to this method is to work within the framework of Google’s view of the world. All [...]

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