Pump Up Your Book Promotion with Google Alerts

About six or so months ago, I was the victim of copyright infringement. In this case, it was a well-known blogging site and one of the members decided they would post an article I had written on their blog and give credit to himself. Immediately, I went into action and had him eradicated from the whole blogging site.

Let me back up, though.

I syndicate articles to hundreds upon hundreds of websites and blogs. They are mainly relationship columns (this one happened to be that), plus I write promotional articles. I do this mainly to gain expert status in my field, but I also do it for the link back which is found in my bio. If the particular website or blog do not provide link backs, they're history and I move on. There are too many other websites or blogs that will.

Before you are wondering if I happened to be patrolling the search engines and just happened to venture onto this by some unforeseen coincidence, think again.

I have what they call google alerts.

I discovered google alerts a year ago and I don't know how I ever lived without them. All I have to do is go to http://www.google.com/alerts?hl=en and put the title of my article (enclosing it with quotation marks) and once a day, I get an "alert" in my email box telling me where my article is showing up.

Anyone who is syndicating their articles over the Internet needs a google alert account. It's free and worth the time it takes to register.

Another thing I discovered about google alerts is that the information that is coming in are all recent, and very rarely do I get an alert with a blog post or webpage that is not current to date.

I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about. Last Christmas, my writing group and I put out a free Christmas ebook. I immediately put the title of the ebook in google alerts to see how well my promotional efforts were paying off. In other words, I wanted to see where my promos were ending up.

Almost immediately, my email box was filling up, telling me where my promo was landing.

Two months later, I rarely get an alert even though the promo is still up on these blogs and websites. So, what's up with that, you ask?

The reason is that the information is now pronounced static.

So, what does that mean?

That means that it is showing me that it is very important not to let a day go by without promoting it in some way. Since Christmas has come and gone, and since it was just a free ebook to give away for promotional reasons, I stopped promoting it and went on to other projects. I don't need to promote it anymore because of that fact. However, if this was a paying ebook, what do you think would happen? The search engines wouldn't pay it any attention, either, and completely overlook it when they send their spiders out.

You have to understand SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and by what I've learned, you can't let anything get static if you are looking for customers. You have to keep promoting, making it a 24/7 obligation. If not, then you are doomed.

You can't just put up a website and not change things around frequently or you're not going to get any visitors. That's it in a nutshell.

So, my google alerts have alerted me not only to where my articles are showing up on a daily basis, they have alerted me to the fact that if I sit on my toosh and not promote even in some tiny way, someone else is going to get the search engines' attention.

Don't make the mistake I did and keep those books out in front of the search engines by blogging about it every day. Pump up that online book promotion and keep visitors returning. ;o)

Tags: google alerts, online book promotion, search engine optimization, copyright infringement, free Christmas ebook, syndicating, book promotion