How to Use LemRank Webhooks and Zapier

What events LemRank can fire on

LemRank can send notifications for various changes detected in your projects. These events can trigger a webhook or a Zapier action, allowing you to route critical information to your preferred tools.

The events LemRank can fire on include:

• Ranking Change Threshold: Triggers when a tracked keyword's ranking position crosses a specified threshold (e.g., drops by more than 5 positions).
• Health Score Drop: Notifies you if your project's overall health score falls below a defined level.
• Volatility Spike: Alerts you to unusual fluctuations in keyword rankings, indicating potential algorithm updates or significant SERP changes.
• New Backlink: Informs you when LemRank discovers a new backlink pointing to your website.
• Lost Backlink: Triggers an alert when a previously identified backlink is no longer detected.
• Competitor Movement: Fires when a monitored competitor makes significant ranking changes for keywords you also track.

Webhook setup and payload format

To set up a webhook, navigate to your project settings in LemRank and select the "Webhooks" tab. You will need to provide a URL where LemRank should send the POST requests.

When an event triggers a webhook, LemRank sends an HTTP POST request to the configured URL. The request body contains a JSON payload detailing the event.

The payload format varies slightly depending on the event type but generally includes:

• event_type: A string identifying the type of event (e.g., ranking_change, health_score_drop).
• project_id: The unique identifier for the project associated with the event.
• timestamp: The time the event occurred in ISO 8601 format.
• data: An object containing event-specific details.

Example: Ranking Change Payload

{
  "event_type": "ranking_change",
  "project_id": "proj_abc123",
  "timestamp": "2023-10-27T10:30:00Z",
  "data": {
    "keyword": "best seo tool",
    "url": "https://example.com/best-seo-tool",
    "previous_rank": 10,
    "current_rank": 15,
    "change": -5,
    "search_engine": "google_us"
  }
}

Example: New Backlink Payload

{
  "event_type": "new_backlink",
  "project_id": "proj_abc123",
  "timestamp": "2023-10-27T10:35:00Z",
  "data": {
    "source_url": "https://example.org/blog/new-article",
    "target_url": "https://example.com/your-page",
    "anchor_text": "read more",
    "discovery_date": "2023-10-26"
  }
}

Zapier integration

LemRank offers a direct integration with Zapier, allowing you to connect your SEO events to thousands of other applications without writing code. You can find LemRank as an available app within the Zapier platform.

LemRank provides curated triggers within Zapier that correspond to the events described in the "What events LemRank can fire on" section. These include:

• New Ranking Change Alert: Triggers when a keyword's ranking position changes by a set threshold.
• New Health Score Drop Alert: Triggers when your project's health score drops.
• New Volatility Spike Alert: Triggers when a significant SERP volatility is detected.
• New Backlink Discovered: Triggers when a new backlink is found for your domain.
• Backlink Lost: Triggers when an existing backlink is no longer detected.
• Competitor Ranking Movement: Triggers when a tracked competitor's rankings change significantly.

When configuring a Zap, select LemRank as the "Trigger" app and choose the specific event you wish to monitor. Zapier will then receive the event data from LemRank and pass it to subsequent "Action" steps in your Zap, such as sending a Slack message, creating a task in a project management tool, or logging data to a spreadsheet.

Slack and email built-in destinations

For common notification needs, LemRank provides built-in destinations for Slack and email. These can be configured directly within your project settings under the "Notifications" tab, offering a simpler alternative to webhooks or Zapier for these specific use cases.

When configuring Slack notifications, you will provide a Slack webhook URL or connect your Slack workspace directly. For email notifications, you will specify the recipient email addresses.

These built-in options provide formatted messages tailored for Slack and email, summarizing the event details without requiring custom parsing of webhook payloads.

Signature verification for security

For enhanced security, every webhook payload sent by LemRank includes an X-LemRank-Signature header. This header contains an HMAC (Hash-based Message Authentication Code) of the request body, generated using a shared secret key specific to your account.

You can retrieve your shared secret key from the Webhooks section of your LemRank project settings.

To verify the authenticity and integrity of a received webhook, you should:

1. Generate an HMAC of the raw request body using your secret key and the SHA256 algorithm.
2. Compare your generated HMAC with the value provided in the X-LemRank-Signature header.

If the two signatures match, you can be confident that the webhook originated from LemRank and that its payload has not been tampered with during transit. If they do not match, the request should be discarded.

Rate limits and retry behaviour

LemRank implements rate limits to ensure the stability and performance of its webhook delivery system. While specific limits are subject to change, excessive requests to a non-responsive endpoint may lead to temporary suspension of webhook attempts for that endpoint.

If LemRank receives a non-2xx HTTP response code (e.g., 4xx or 5xx) from your webhook URL, it considers the delivery attempt unsuccessful. In such cases, LemRank implements an exponential backoff strategy for retries:

• LemRank will attempt to deliver the webhook up to 5 times.
• The retry attempts are spaced out over approximately 30 minutes.
• The delay between retries increases exponentially to allow time for the receiving server to recover from any issues.

After 5 failed attempts, LemRank will cease retrying for that specific event. It is recommended that your webhook endpoint responds with a 2xx status code as quickly as possible to acknowledge receipt, even if further processing is queued asynchronously.

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