A few years ago, I wrote about using Google Alerts Tips and Tricks for SEO. If This Then That (IFTTT), is another great resource I use on a daily basis. From sending e-mails, to interacting with social media sites. IFTTT is a great tool to use for SEO and makes things more efficient overall.

What is IFTTT?

If This Then That “puts the internet to work for you.” The tool is all about using created recipes to trigger actions when something happens over the internet or across a social media app that you’re using.

Recipes
There are two types of recipes. DO recipes and IF recipes. Quite simply, DO recipes run with a tap and enable to create your own button, camera, and notepad. The exception here is that DO recipes are app controlled, and available for both Android and iOS IFTTT Aps.

IF Recipes
IF recipes are recipes that run in the background, and create connections with one simple statement; if this then that.

Most if not all the recipes below, fall into this IF recipe category. These are the IFTTT Recipes that I use to help keep me in the loop, or alert me when something happens. Using this tool in conjunction with Google Alerts is highly recommended.

IFTTT Recipes for Marketing

Discover when someone links to your competitor
This will send you an alert when a website links to your competitor. This alert saves you time from doing it manually, and allows you to help craft your content strategy for linkable ideas that your competitor has worked on.

How to create this recipe:

1. Search for your competitors’ website(s) on Moz’s Moz.com Open Site Explorer.
2. When the results come up, click on the “Just Discovered” tab
3. Copy the URL of the “Just Discovered” tab
4. Go to Page2RSS and paste your URL. This will create an RSS feed of just discovered sites.
5. Go to IFTTT.com
6. THIS Channel: Feed (use the feed you just created)
7. THAT Channel: Email

Identify competitor’s XML sitemap updates
This alert will help you track page additions or removals from your competitors’ website. Another great way to use their content strategy, and keeps your eyes open to decide if anything needs to be updated on your website.

How to create this recipe:

1. Use Page2RSS to create a feed of your competitor’s XML sitemap
2. Go to IFTTT.com
3. THIS Channel: Insert the copied Page2RSS generated link into Feed and ‘New feed item’
4. THAT Channel: Email or Gmail

Identifying when a website links to yours through Moz’s “just discovered” tool
Use this alert to watch new URLs that have linked to your content. This kind of alert can be used to reach out to continued prospective leads to create partnerships or other linking opportunities. It’s also valuable if you’re actively managing links and tracking performance for a particular linking program.

How to create this recipe:

1. Search for your website or page on Moz’s Open Site Explorer.
2. When the results come up, click on the “Just Discovered” tab
3. Copy the URL of the “Just Discovered” tab
4. Go to Page2RSS.com and paste your URL. This will create an RSS feed of just discovered sites.
5. Go to IFTT.com
6. THIS Channel: Feed (use the feed you just created)
7. THAT Channel: Email

Identify SERPs changes for Rich Snippets
This IFTTT alert monitors to identify when your website pages gain rich snippets in SERP listings. This is effective and necessary when you’re trying to show how much of an impact your rich snippets have when they’re triggered through searches.

How to create this recipe:

1. Setup a Visualping.io notification or the SERP page where your listing exists.
2. Go to IFTTT.com
3. THIS Channel: Email or Gmail then ‘New Email From’ hello@visualping.io
4. THAT Channel: Google Doc then ‘Add Row to Spreadsheet’.

Monitor Google’s Guidelines for Content
This alert is used to watch and find any changes made to Google’s content guidelines. Perfect for making sure that you’re never missing out on any relevant pieces of information that you should be applying to your website.

How to create this recipe:

1. For each page in Google’s Content Guidelines, use Page2RSS to turn them into RSS feeds
2. Go to IFTTT.com
3. THIS Channel: Feed
4. Copy the feed into IFTTT
5. THAT Channel: Email
6. Create a new recipe for each page in the guidelines

So these are a few of my favorite IFTTT recipes. They all offer a specific purpose with my weekly SEO routine for making my life easier and more efficient when it comes to collecting data. Do you use IFTTT.com? What are your favorite recipes?