How to do Programmatic SEO?

What is SEO?

SEO, and in particular programmatic SEO, is the most technical ‘type’ of growth marketing.

Why? Because it involves research, structured data, programming and content at scale, plus creativity and - ideally and if possible - user generated content or user generated data. It involves experimenting, and flawless technical SEO execution. A lot depends on your product, model and vertical. Recently it’s changing dynamically and rapidly due to GenAI / AIO.

What is programmatic SEO?

Programmatic SEO (pSEO) is about creating many (dozens, hundreds, or thousands) of content landing pages using a structured database (ideally proprietary or UGC) to rank high on Google programmatically for long-tail and niche keywords. Instead of manually writing individual pages, pSEO automates content creation and publishing for hundreds or thousands of pages, by using unique data and templates to streamline this process.

It is not suitable for every niche or business, but it can be effectively implemented in many cases. It’s most effective for large-scale sites such as directories, affiliate platforms, marketplaces, media, and content hubs, where the ability to generate unique pages for every search query or topic is a competitive edge.

Programmatic SEO automates content optimization at scale, delivering significant traffic gains for major companies, for example:

  • Zapier: 1.2M → 4.8M monthly visitors in 3 years
  • Amazon's Alexa team multiplied content reach without workforce expansion
  • TripAdvisor gets 300M+ visitors per month. Started off as a travel blog in the ‘90s.

Key benefits of programmatic SEO

  • Reduces manual workload 
  • Automates content creation
  • Scales optimization efforts
  • Increases SERP visibility

Create your programmatic SEO

What’s Your Niche and Target Keywords? 

Do your own research. Research is 80% of the work before you jump into creating content. Begin with a niche, be creative and figure out what it’ll get you, whether you’ll get the right targeted traffic eg. informational vs transactional keyword traffic. Think about what and why people are searching for in Google & other search engines. Use tools like Moz or Google Keyword Planner to identify long-tail keywords relevant to your search audience. 

For example, if you run a travel site, you could target combinations like:

  • "Best hotels in [City]"
  • "Things to do in [Country]"

Tip: prioritize keywords with low competition and high search intent. These are typically underserved queries where you can shine and rank for.

Build the right structured datasets

Data is key. Your dataset should include all the elements and variables you need to generate unique pages. For example:

  • Travel niche: destinations, hotel details, amenities, reviews, pricing.
  • The data is what allows the best programmatic websites to stand out.

Make sure you’ve worked on your data, or if you used genAI tools that you’ve checked for hallucinations and quality. The data and content should be clean, complete and free of errors and inauthentic bs.

Create the right templates

These templates must dynamically pull data (or genAI content) to create unique pages for each query. Key elements to include in your templates:

  • H1 Tags
  • Meta Titles
  • Meta Descriptions
  • Focus on structured landing page content eg. "Where are the best [Hotel Name] in [City]. Enjoy [Amenity] for [Price]."

Your goal is to make each page unique and valuable to visitors.

Automate it - use GenAI tools

The magic with GenAI is amazing, plus you can use specific tools / platforms that enable programmatic page creation at scale. Options include WordPress + Custom Plugins; WebFlow; or custom scripts eg. Python or PHP to automate landing page generation.

Ensure the automation process maintains high-quality standards—Google’s algorithms are very sharp enough to spot crappy landing pages. Also don’t do it at length upfront, sequence it, your crawl budget will allow you to index specific amounts of pages every week (this depends on the domain authority of your www).

Optimize for on-page and off-page SEO

pSEO’s success depends on how well optimized your technical (on-page) SEO is, as well as off-page SEO. Focus on:

- Internal linking of related pages to create a logical web structure.

- Page speed: lightweight and fast loading.

- Schema markup: add relevant schema (eg. product, FAQ) for visibility.

- Unique content: ensure key sections (eg. intros) are varied between pages.

What to avoid in programmatic SEO?

Be careful about:

  • Thin content: creating bs pages that don’t provide actual value to visitors. This is what 99% of GenAI wrapper services do.
  • Duplicate content: avoid cannibalization = avoid penalties.
  • Over-optimization: keyword stuffing and unnatural copy can hurt rankings.
  • Crawl errors: check for broken links or poor URL formats.

If you're eager to learn more, check out our Programmatic SEO Agency page.