Even though you can generate 100s or even 1000s of pages using programmatic SEO, you shouldn’t just focus on creating more pages. Instead, your goal should be to create high-quality pages that can withstand the wrath of Google updates for years to come.
To be honest, the concept of programmatic SEO is not new. Big businesses and individuals have been doing it for at least a decade. In this series of tweets, Justin says that he has been killing it with pSEO since 2010.
I would agree with the fact that there is a very thin line between “programmatic SEO – the traffic driver” and “programmatic SEO – the spam”.
Now, let’s dive deeper into what programmatic SEO is and what you can do with it…
What is programmatic SEO?
Programmatic SEO is a strategy to scale the production of unique pages targeting different long-tail keywords while maintaining quality. The technique uses a template and a database to generate the pages in bulk, but the published pages should not feel like they have been generated programmatically.
To be able to create a successful programmatic SEO website, along with the technical knowledge to set up the workflow, you also need to understand the basics of SEO.
How does programmatic SEO work?
Through the page template, you design and format how you want the generated pages to look and feel; through the database, you collect what information or data points you want to show.
Connect the page template with the database by using an automation program, run the program, and you’re done! You should now have the pages in bulk, and often the number of generated pages equals the number of entries in the database.
By looking at the above diagram, you should now have an overall idea of how programmatic SEO works.
You can design page templates to look like a simple blog post or a polished landing page, and the database can be a simple CSV file or a MySQL instance. It all depends on what you will be using it for.
Even though you now have a basic understanding of programmatic SEO, you’re still clueless about what you can use it for.
Well, here are some things that you can do. Let’s see…
What can I do with programmatic SEO?
You can drive tons of highly targeted traffic to your website by using the techniques of programmatic SEO.
But it’s way more than just traffic!
1. Create similar-styled pages at scale
“Solana Price” is a keyword that Binance is targeting by creating a separate page that has a specific design, as you see in the screenshot below.
Now, there are 100s of crypto coins like Solana that Binance wants to create separate pages for. So the question is, is there any benefit of keeping the design of all these pages different?
Absolutely not!
Binance should create or rather has created 100s of similar-styled pages for all the other crypto coins like Monero and Neo. They just designed the template once, connected their database of coins with all required data points, and generated a separate page for each coin.
And if you analyze, what benefit did they get from programmatic SEO?
- Scale – as they generated 100s of pages in comparatively less time
- Exposure – as those pages rank and get 1000s of monthly organic traffic
- Revenue – as more people come to the website, there will be more customers
Whether you have a SaaS business or a simple content site, you can use programmatic SEO to create similar-styled pages and drive targeted traffic to your website. For SaaS businesses, you can create comparison and alternative pages; for content sites, you can use pSEO to establish a content hub.
You can use the technique for literally any business.
2. Get more leads
Run a SaaS company, sell a digital product, or have a simple newsletter?
You can use programmatic SEO to put your brand out in front of thousands of people. Create 100s of information pages on your website that your target audience searches for, and you can collect leads for your business once they land on your website.
The best example of this is Failory, which programmatically created 100s of information pages to attract readers who were interested in startups. And grew its newsletter to more than 25,000 readers.
Failory placed CTA banners (like the one you see in the screenshot above) on top of all the programmatically created information pages and earned a massive list of emails by offering useful freebies.
Let me show you one more example…
Another pSEO example is Upsolve which creates informative pages and places an eye-catching CTA banner in the sidebar, as you can see in the screenshot. The keywords that the site targets are transactional, and the CTA is so good that it’s difficult for readers to not click on the “Get Started” button.
See, programmatic SEO can work as a lead-generation tool as well.
3. Generate more revenue
More targeted traffic and more leads on your website ultimately translate to more revenue for your business.
Canva generates more than 100 million organic traffic every month and now let’s do some math here. Say, Canva is able to convert just 0.1% of the incoming 100M traffic. And that comes out to be 100,000. Now, out of 100,000 monthly users, say, 10% of users upgrade to the premium which is around $10 per month. Then it’s $100,000 monthly revenue only from the organic channel programmatic SEO.
And it’s a serious underestimation, by the way.
Let’s take another example of a small content site in the dog niche that monetizes via affiliate promotion. Generally, affiliate marketers create simple affiliate pages like best dog foods for labradoodles which are difficult to rank for new sites.
But the new sites can easily target keywords like can dogs eat brisket and can dogs eat chicken salad and rank for them as well. And as these topics are very similar, there certainly are scopes for using programmatic SEO.
And if an affiliate site gets more targeted visitors, it will ultimately translate to more revenue.
4. Present boring data in a beautiful way
Take a look at both parts of the below image, both showcase the same data (from OECD data). Now, tell me which is easier to take a look at and understand.
If you’re like most people, you would prefer looking at the second image. Because it looks beautiful and is easier to visualize.
You can also use programmatic SEO to showcase a huge amount of data in a beautiful way by creating multiple pages. And of course, it will also reward you with a lot of traffic.
Make sure you are not just dumping the data on the page, extract something meaningful out of it and then publish.
And that should give you an idea of the possibilities with programmatic SEO.
FAQs about programmatic SEO
1. Can I implement programmatic SEO on my existing website?
Yes, 100%.
In fact, implementing the techniques of programmatic SEO on an existing website works better as compared to a fresh domain because Google and other search engines already trust the site’s content.
And I am talking about both – a business site and a simple content site.
2. Would it be possible to do programmatic SEO on WordPress?
Yes, it’s possible to do programmatic SEO on WordPress. There are plugins and SaaS tools that make this possible.
And not just on WordPress, you can programmatically generate pages on almost all platforms – be it Webflow, Wix, Duda, and even on custom-coded sites.
3. Does Google consider programmatic sites spam?
No, Google does not consider programmatic sites as spam. In spam policies, Google has clarified that they don’t consider all automatically generated content as spam.
However, if the programmatic pages are of very low quality, or you are just showing any scraped data without adding any value, Google might consider it spam.
Final words
If you manage to create content that is useful for the users, Google or any other search engines aren’t concerned about the method you have used to create content – you’re good to go.
Furthermore, remember that the “technical parts” in programmatic SEO are not the most important parts; it’s the “non-technical parts” (like choosing keywords, preparing datasets, outlining page templates, etc.) that are critical for success.
That’s it.
If you have any related queries, kindly feel free to let me know in the comments below.
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