In 2024, one of the best ways to generate traffic to your website remains natural referencing (SEO). However, thanks to modern technological advances (especially artificial intelligence), it has never been easier to position yourself on different keywords to capture as much traffic as possible. One of the most recent methods to emerge is programmatic SEO.
However, while programmatic SEO has some distinct advantages, knowing how to use it effectively is essential. So let's look at the basic elements of this process and how it can benefit your business.
What is programmatic SEO?
Programmatic SEO (pSEO) uses technology and templates to create multiple landing pages that focus on low-competition keywords. The aim is to create a unique and compelling model that can be repeated and adjusted as needed to target nearly identical keywords in the same domain. Done right, you could potentially create thousands or millions of web pages and increase your brand's domain authority almost instantly.
However, conversely, if the content is not relevant or valuable enough, you may simply create “spam” pages that could do more harm than good.
One of the fundamental aspects of programmatic SEO is building a high-quality landing page template. The better your model is, the better your chances of success.
Concrete examples of successful programmatic SEO
Some industries may benefit from programmatic SEO more than others. In general, travel sites use this practice the most because they need to target people in different cities and countries. For example, Expedia has thousands of landing pages that center on specific keywords (for example, “the best hotels in [city]”) and simply changes the city name for each page. Otherwise, the layout and content are nearly the same on every page.
In this case, programmatic SEO simply speeds up the process of creating these pages one by one, which is what sites like Expedia would have wanted to do anyway. Since their goal is to offer accommodations in every city, it makes sense to use technology to build a repeatable SEO model.
Concrete examples of businesses using programmatic SEO:
Canva
‍Canva is an online graphic design tool that allows anyone to create a wide variety of images and graphics, without the need to download software. Since there are a lot of unique options out there (for example, social media posts, business cards, video icons, etc.), Canva wants to rank for each of them.
Instead of creating optimized landing pages manually, the site uses PSEO to generate similar content around different keywords. An example could be “how to create [X]”, where the X can be replaced by anything that someone could create with Canva. By producing numerous pages in this way, Canva strengthens its online profile and often takes the first place for every search.
Zapier
‍Zapier's business model allows businesses to connect different programs by “zapping” them to trigger various automations within a given chain. Since Zapier can work with almost any program and there are thousands or millions of combinations out there, it can easily use programmatic SEO.
For example, each landing page could explain how to connect multiple apps with Zapier, and the company would just change the names of the apps on each page. It can even generate hundreds of pages for a single application or website and explain how to connect it to numerous other programs. Since each page is useful for the user, they combine to put Zapier at the top of the results for these types of queries.
Eater
‍Eater is a website dedicated to helping people find the best restaurants in their city. Although the list of restaurants varies from city to city, the model presenting them is the same. So Eater's pSEO strategy works almost the same way as a travel site like Expedia or TripAdvisor.
The keywords in this case could be like “the best restaurants in [city]”, or Eater could focus on longer keywords like “affordable restaurants for a family of four in [city].” Thanks to programmatic SEO, Eater can rank for thousands of keywords without having to put in a lot of effort.
Self-Servicecarwash.com
Example with a directory, this programmatic SEO site was created with Next.js and Supabase by myself. It presents car washes in the USA, grouped by city. There are in total more than 5000 pages on this site, but all thanks to a simple home page and two skeleton pages, one for the top car washes by city and another for the car wash overview page.
Archery-range.com
Another concrete example with an archery range directory this time, the stands are distributed in the USA and Canada, also grouped by top in each city.
Other types of sites that can benefit from pSEO:
- The Top X lists : List sites are very popular because they gather data for customers looking for products or locations. It is also very easy to create a unique template where you can enter data for each list. Plus, you can rank for a wide variety of topics, such as dog toys, video games, streaming apps, and more.
- Alternative sites to [X] : If a product is popular, it will likely have competitors. You can create a model of the best alternatives to a well-ranked product or program and then aggregate data to use programmatic SEO. An example might be “The Best Alternatives to Photoshop,” and you're just finding apps that offer similar graphic design features.
Separating fact from fiction: is programmatic SEO synonymous with spam?
If you do programmatic SEO properly, it's not spam. However, because this process involves a certain learning curve, it's easy to “spam” your own site, which could be flagged by Google and other search engines.
In most cases, pSEO requires web development skills, but there are no-code alternatives if you don't want to work on the development side of your site. It is entirely possible to do this with Webflow.
The key to programmatic SEO not being spam is to focus on value and to ensure that data sets change from landing page to landing page. Also, depending on your site and the content you offer, you may only be able to generate a few dozen pages, not several thousand. Be sure to moderate your expectations before you get started.
Jump-starting your strategy: A beginner's guide to programmatic SEO
As you can see, programmatic SEO can be a powerful tool for improving your site's search engine rankings. However, it's not a quick fix or an alternative to creating high-quality pages that meet the needs of your customers. Here are a few things to get you started:
- Focus on value : Sites like Eater and Expedia benefit from PSEO because they want to create these types of list pages anyway. Technology just speeds up the process, but content is valuable to users no matter what. If you just try to position yourself on keywords without worrying about the content of your page, you will end up creating spam.
- Avoid duplicate content : Because you're creating a unique model, it's easy to generate “duplicate” content if the details are very similar. For example, if you create lists of product alternatives, you might have nearly identical lists for similar products. Because Google flags duplicate content, you need to check that your data sets are unique enough.
- Test your models before deploying them at scale : While it's possible to generate hundreds or thousands of pages from a single template, you want to test it a few times before scaling up. This will allow you to correct problems and verify that your programming is working properly. Once the issues are resolved, you can increase the scale as much as needed.
If you want to create a site using “programmatic SEO”, Agence No Code can create your site at an affordable cost and in record time.
