Software Growth

Programmatic SEO

Programmatic SEO is the practice of generating many keyword-targeted pages from a template and a data set, instead of writing each page by hand.

Programmatic SEO means creating a large number of pages automatically from a template and structured data, with each page aimed at a different search query. Instead of writing 500 articles, you write one template and fill it from a database of cities, tools, currencies or integrations. For SaaS it is a way to cover a long tail of queries that no one would ever write by hand.

How it works

Ahrefs describes the process in six steps: find a keyword pattern that scales, build a reusable page template, source the data, generate the pages, automate publishing and updates, and monitor performance (Ahrefs). The pattern is usually "[thing] + [modifier]", such as "invoice template for [profession]" or "[tool A] integration with [tool B]".

Examples worth knowing

Ahrefs reports, from its own traffic estimates, that Canva grew from about 23 to about 310 ranking feature pages and from roughly 20,000 to 13 million monthly visits, and that Notion launched more than 600 template category pages that bring around 204,000 monthly visits. These are third-party estimates for large companies and not a promise for a small site. Notion's templates are also an example of user-generated content, a close cousin where users supply the data.

The main risk is thin content

The same article quotes Google's John Mueller saying that programmatic SEO is often a fancy banner for spam. The risk is publishing thousands of near-identical pages with nothing new on them, which can lead to ranking drops across the site. Its conclusion is that scale only works if you have something worth publishing at scale, such as proprietary data, real calculations or unique tools.

A quality test before you scale

  • Would a person landing on page 400 of your set find a useful answer, or only your keyword repeated?
  • Does each page contain data or functionality that differs meaningfully from the others?
  • Is there a path from the page into the product, a lead magnet or a trial?
  • Can you keep the data fresh? Stale pages decay.

Start with 20 to 50 pages and watch indexing, impressions and clicks for two months before generating more. If pages are not being indexed, more pages will not fix it.

Where it fits a small SaaS

It is strongest for products with natural variation: integrations, templates, calculators, location or industry versions. A bookkeeping tool with 40 integrations can build 40 good pages. It is weak for a product with one use case and no data to vary. In that case, ten well-researched articles will beat 1,000 generated ones. Think of the output as one input to a growth loop and measure signups per page, not just traffic, because a page with 5,000 visits and a 0.1 percent conversion rate yields 5 signups.

Related terms

Sources

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