Programmatic SEO
Why it matters
Written by hand, a thousand pages is a year of work. Built from a template, they cost little once the data and design are right. The risk is real, though. Google's spam policies name scaled content abuse, meaning pages produced in bulk mainly to rank, whether by people, automation or both. Pages that repeat one paragraph with a word swapped add nothing, and they can pull down the whole site.
How to apply it
- Find queries that follow a pattern and already have search demand.
- Check that the dataset holds something useful and unique for each page, such as real specifications, prices or steps.
- Design the template so each page answers its query on its own.
- Read a sample of finished pages by hand before publishing the lot.
- After a few months, merge or remove pages that attract nothing.
What it is
Programmatic SEO starts with a table of data and a page template. A currency converter that has a page for every pair of currencies is a familiar kind. So is a directory of app integrations, one page per app. The template supplies the layout and the data supplies what makes each page different.
It suits searches that follow a pattern, such as "[tool] integration" or "[service] in [city]", where thousands of people each ask a slightly different version of the same question.
Common mistakes
- Building the template first and hunting for data afterwards.
- Publishing thousands of pages with the same text and a changed name.
- Letting stale data spread. A wrong figure in the dataset is wrong on every page.
