In the last post, we showed you how to set up Google Alerts to comb the Internet for newsworthy items that you can either write about on your website, or simply read something that interests you. If you set up the Google Alerts account, you most likely set them up to be sent via email, which is the default. Now, we will focus on how you can set up a reader in your Google account to begin leveraging RSS feeds. An RSS feed stands for “Rich Site Summary” or “Really Simple Syndication” and is really nothing but a text file, albeit a very powerful text file. You see, RSS feeds is the format used to deliver regularly changing web content. An RSS Reader or News Aggregator does nothing more than grab those RSS feeds from various sites and display them for you to read and use. That very same reader will also help you manage the alerts you set up to help you write content for your website. There are many readers, but I like to use what I consider the standard, Google Reader. It’s free and easy to use.
Here’s a quick video for an overview on Google Reader.
Here’s a quick video on how to set up Google Reader.
Now that Google Reader is set up, you can begin reaping the benefits of having all newsworthy items and sites of interest delivered to one convenient place, your reader. But first, let’s revisit the Google Alerts to show you how to integrate the alerts with the reader. Keep in mind, you must have Google Reader set up before doing this next step. OK, return to Google Alerts and “Click Here to Manage Your Alerts” or simply go Manage My Google Alerts. As you can see by the image below, I created two example alerts, one using email delivery and the other using Google Reader.
To change the delivery from email to reader, simply edit the alert and use the drop-down box to change the “Delivery to” from “Email” to “Feed” and click “Save.” There, you are done. Now all of your alerts will be sent to your Google Reader.
Now we can either click on View in Google Reader or simply go to http:reader.google.com. All of your Google Alerts should be listed in the reader. It will take some time before items begin to aggregate, but eventually you will start seeing results. OK, we have Google Alerts and Google Reader set up and we have changed all of our alerts to go directly to our reader. If you did everything right, you will eventually start seeing your alerts in your reader as in the example below:
Keep in mind, I set up different folders in my Reader so yours may look different. Now, anytime something comes up as an alert, it will be sent straight to your reader for easy access.
Are you beginning to see the power behind this combination? To summarize what we have covered the last couple newsletters.
1. Created Google Alerts account. This will alert you by either email or sent to your reader, whenever a topic of choice is syndicated on the Internet.
2. Created a Google Reader account to organize our alerts and any RSS feed for that matter.
3. We changed the delivery of our Google Alerts to “Feed” so that all alerts are delivered straight to our reader.
Now, you can simply go to your reader to review your alerts and find topics that would be interesting to write and post on your website or blog. Take the idea of existing content, rewrite or reword to fit your business topic and optionally link to more content on your site. Powerful stuff! From an effectiveness standpoint, this method borders on phenomenal. That is, creating content that is applicable to your business and optionally link to other sections of your website that contain more about the topic. The end result is more content for your website, more links to your website, and top rankings for the keywords you are targeting.
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