Restflow.io

## Introduction

Search engine ranking is crucial for businesses relying on organic traffic. Marketing teams, SEO specialists, and data analysts often need to track the ranking changes of top web pages and respond quickly to drops or improvements.

Manually monitoring rankings via search consoles or SEO tools can be time-consuming and error-prone. Automating notifications for rank changes empowers data & analytics teams to rapidly detect shifts, pivot strategies, and report insights efficiently.

In this tutorial, we’ll build a robust automation workflow using **n8n** that:

– Periodically fetches ranking data for your top web pages
– Compares the latest rank against the previous rank
– Sends notifications when there is a significant rank change

We’ll integrate:

– **Google Sheets** (to store ranking data history)
– **Google Search Console** API (to fetch latest rankings — or alternatively an SEO rank tracking API)
– **Slack** (to send notifications to your team)

This workflow is perfect for Data & Analytics teams, SEO specialists, and automation engineers who want timely, actionable alerts without manual checking.

—

## Prerequisites

– An n8n instance (cloud or self-hosted)
– Google Cloud Console project with Search Console API enabled, with OAuth credentials configured
– Slack workspace with an incoming webhook or bot token with permissions to post messages
– Google Sheets with a sheet prepared to store historical ranking data (columns: URL, Date, Rank)

—

## Step 1: Understand the Problem & Workflow Outline

**Problem**: Manual monitoring of page rankings is tedious and slow.

**Goal**: Automatically detect when your top pages change their search engine ranking and notify stakeholders in Slack.

**Workflow overview**:

1. Trigger: Scheduled to run daily/weekly.
2. Fetch the current ranking data for a list of monitored URLs (via Search Console API or another SEO ranking API).
3. Retrieve the stored previous ranking data from Google Sheets.
4. Compare current ranks with previous ranks.
5. Identify significant rank changes (e.g., rank difference ≥ 3).
6. Send Slack notifications with details of the rank changes.
7. Update Google Sheets with the latest ranking data.

—

## Step 2: Set Up the Trigger in n8n

– Use the **Cron** node.
– Configure it to run once per day at a specified time, e.g., 8:00 AM.

This scheduled trigger will start the entire process.

—

## Step 3: Define the List of URLs to Monitor

You can store your list of URLs either:

– In **Google Sheets** (a separate sheet/tab), or
– Hardcoded in the **Set** node in n8n.

For simplicity, begin with the **Set** node:

– Add a field, e.g., `urls`, with an array of target URLs.

Example:
“`
[“https://example.com/page1”, “https://example.com/page2”, “https://example.com/page3”]
“`

Later, you can evolve this to pull URLs dynamically from a Google Sheet or database.

—

## Step 4: Fetch Current Rankings

### Option 1: Search Console API

– Use the **Google Search Console** node (if available) or the **HTTP Request** node to call Search Console API.

Search Console Endpoint for performance data:

POST https://searchconsole.googleapis.com/v1/sites/{siteUrl}/searchAnalytics/query

**Request parameters**:
– `startDate` and `endDate`: typically yesterday’s date
– `dimensions`: [‘page’]
– `dimensionFilterGroups`: filter for your URLs

### Option 2: Third-party SEO Rank Tracking API (like Ahrefs, SEMrush, etc.)

Use the HTTP Request node configured with your API key, and make API calls for each URL.

### Implementation in n8n
If using Search Console:

– Use the **HTTP Request** node:
– Method: POST
– URL: `https://searchconsole.googleapis.com/v1/sites/{siteUrlEncoded}/searchAnalytics/query`
– Authentication: OAuth2 (configured for Google API)
– Body JSON:
“`json
{
“startDate”: “{{ $moment().subtract(1, ‘days’).format(‘YYYY-MM-DD’) }}”,
“endDate”: “{{ $moment().subtract(1, ‘days’).format(‘YYYY-MM-DD’) }}”,
“dimensions”: [“page”],
“dimensionFilterGroups”: [{
“filters”: [
{
“dimension”: “page”,
“operator”: “in”,
“expression”: {{JSON.stringify($json.urls)}}
}
]
}]
}
“`

– The response includes clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position per page.
– Extract the average position (`position`) as the current rank.

If URL filtering in one query is problematic due to API limits, iterate using the **SplitInBatches** node.

—

## Step 5: Retrieve Historical Rankings from Google Sheets

– Use the **Google Sheets** node.

**Configuration:**
– Operation: Read
– Spreadsheet ID: your sheet ID
– Sheet Name: e.g., ‘Rankings’

Retrieve all rows containing:
– `URL`
– `Date`
– `Rank`

Process this data to get the latest rank for each URL (usually the most recent date).

—

## Step 6: Compare Current and Previous Rankings

Add a **Function** node to calculate:

– The rank difference: current rank – previous rank
– Whether the difference crosses your threshold (e.g., 3 positions change)
– Build a list of URLs with significant rank changes

Example pseudocode inside the function:
“`javascript
const currentData = items[0].json; // current ranks
const previousData = items[1].json; // previous ranks

const threshold = 3;

const notifications = [];

currentData.forEach(cur => {
const prev = previousData.find(p => p.url === cur.url);
if (!prev) return;
const diff = prev.rank – cur.rank;
if (Math.abs(diff) >= threshold) {
notifications.push({
url: cur.url,
previousRank: prev.rank,
currentRank: cur.rank,
diff
});
}
});

return notifications.map(n => ({ json: n }));
“`

—

## Step 7: Send Notifications via Slack

– Use the **Slack** node.

**Configuration:**
– Operation: Post Message
– Channel: your designated SEO alerts channel
– Message:
– Format the message to include URL, previous rank, current rank, and rank change.

Example message:
“`
🔔 Rank Change Detected for <{{url}}|Page>
Previous Rank: {{previousRank}}
Current Rank: {{currentRank}}
Change: {{diff > 0 ? ‘+’ + diff : diff}}
“`

If multiple URLs have changes, send either individual messages or a compiled summary.

—

## Step 8: Update Google Sheets with New Ranking Data

– Use the **Google Sheets** node.

**Operation:** Append
– Append rows with today’s date, URLs, and current ranks for future historical comparison.

—

## Step 9: Error Handling and Robustness Tips

– Handle API rate limits by adding delays or using the **SplitInBatches** node.
– Ensure date/time consistency by using UTC dates.
– Validate response data structure and handle missing data gracefully (e.g., when a URL is not found in the Search Console response).
– Use environment variables or n8n credentials for API keys to secure sensitive data.
– Add logging or Slack alerts on errors to notify the team of workflow failures.

—

## Step 10: Scaling and Adaptations

– For large sets of URLs, paginate calls or split batches to avoid hitting API limits.
– Incorporate other ranking metrics, like clicks or impressions, to enrich notifications.
– Extend to multiple search engines by adapting API calls.
– Integrate with dashboards like Google Data Studio by exporting updated sheets.
– Add an approval step where significant negative changes trigger manual verification before notifying.

—

## Summary

Automating notifications for top page rank changes with n8n brings speed and accuracy to ranking monitoring. By integrating Search Console data with Google Sheets and Slack, your Data & Analytics team gains a powerful tool to track SEO performance without manual effort.

This workflow lowers response times, focuses attention on meaningful rank shifts, and centralizes insights in the communication channels your team already uses.

**Bonus Tip:** Combine this workflow with automated ticket creation in Jira or HubSpot for rank drops that require SEO team action. This further streamlines your SEO operations and accountability.

Start automating your SEO rank notifications today and keep your team proactively informed!