If you’re at all engaged in promoting your website, building links, or building business relationships through forums, blogs, link exchanges, carnivals, etc., then you know how much time you can spend doing those things.  Often, much of that time is spent trying to find good places or opportunities to request links, start a conversation, or promote your product or website.  Well how would you like to received a constant stream of these opportunities right in your inbox?  The tool has been around for quite a while now, but I suspect many haven’t been using it for these purposes.  That tool is Google’s Alerts, and it can drastically cut down the time you spend looking for related websites and content that can prove to be a resource in your website promoting journey.

What is Google Alerts?

For those that aren’t aware, Google Alerts is a tool provided by Google that automatically sends you links to content on the internet that contains certain keywords or parameters that you define.  For example, if you have a website about hair care products and you’re interested in getting alerts about web content related to the latest and greatest hair dryer (the DryFast2000), you can set up an alert that notifies you anytime the term “dryfast2000″ is newly posted on the internet.  You can choose to get these alerts instantly, once a day, or once a week.  Among other things you can also choose the type of web content that you want to receive alerts about (web, blogs, video, comprehensive, and more).

If you have a Google account, it’s extremely simple to set up your Alerts.  If you don’t have a Google Account, it just take a few quick seconds to set one up for you.

How to Use Google Alerts

At this point, it may be an obvious point that receiving dozens of notifications each day about highly targeted and related websites can be extremely helpful in finding opportunities to promote your website (either through link building or simply spreading the word about your product, service, or website).  It’s a simple thing, but one that can save you loads of time.  In addition, it may even help you stay abreast of the latest developing information in your niche or industry.