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Understanding programmatic seo and why it matters
Ever felt like you’re running on a treadmill trying to write enough blog posts to move the needle on your traffic?
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Understanding programmatic seo and why it matters
Ever felt like you’re running on a treadmill trying to write enough blog posts to move the needle on your traffic? It’s exhausting, and honestly, most of us just don’t have the time to manually craft every single landing page for every weirdly specific search someone might type into google.
That’s where programmatic seo (or pseo if you’re lazy like me) comes in. It is basically using code and data to build thousands of high-quality pages at once. Instead of writing one article, you build a system that generates thousands. Zapier is the king of this—they have over 50,000 of these pages for different app integrations which is just insane when you think about it.
At its core, pSEO is about scale. According to Positional, it’s the process of quickly creating a huge number of pages using a data source and a template. You aren’t just throwing junk at the wall, though—you’re targeting “long-tail” keywords.
Think of a “head term” like “teacher salary.” That’s way too competitive. But a “modifier” makes it specific: “teacher salary in Charleston South Carolina.” By swapping out the city name in your database, you can suddenly rank for 500 different cities without breaking a sweat.
Healthcare example: A site like Zocdoc doesn’t write a page for every doctor by hand. They use a database of medical specialties and cities (e.g., “dentists in Brooklyn”) to generate thousands of listings. They keep their URL slugs super clean, like zocdoc.com/dentists/brooklyn, which helps google understand exactly what the page is about.
Retail example: An e-commerce giant might create pages for “best [brand] shoes under $[price]” across every brand they carry.
Finance example: Wise uses this for currency conversions. They have pages for almost every currency pairing imaginable, like “AUD to EUR rate,” which serves as a landing page for their transfer service.
People get these mixed up all the time, but they’re actually partners. Product-led seo is when your product itself solves the searcher’s problem. Programmatic is just the “how”—the method you use to build those pages so people can actually find your product.
To make sure this doesn’t just look like spam, you need a “Human-in-the-loop” workflow. This basically means having a real person check the templates and a sample of the generated content to ensure the ai or database isn’t spitting out total nonsense. Google loves content that has a human editorial touch.
As noted by Arso Stojović on LinkedIn, pSEO is a mix of code, content, and strategy. You need both for a killer marketing plan because one provides the value and the other provides the reach.
Diagram 1: A visual breakdown showing how head terms and modifiers combine to create thousands of unique long-tail keyword targets.
It’s a powerful way to put your brand on the map without hiring an army of writers. But wait, before you go and generate 10,000 pages tonight, there’s some stuff you gotta know about how this actually works in the real world.
Next, we’ll look at some actual examples of companies that absolutely crushed it with this strategy.
Real-world examples of programmatic seo done right
Ever wonder how some sites just seem to own every niche search on the planet? It’s not magic or a massive team of caffeinated writers—it’s usually just a really smart database doing the heavy lifting.
If you’re a marketing manager or a brand strategist, seeing this in action is way better than reading a textbook definition. Let’s look at who’s actually winning the pSEO game right now.
Zapier is basically a masterclass in this stuff. They noticed that people don’t just search for “automation tool”—they search for “how to connect slack to trello” or “google sheets and stripe integration.”
Instead of writing one blog post about it, they built a system that generates a landing page for every possible app pairing. As I mentioned in the first section, they have over 50k of these pages. Each one shows specific “Zaps” or triggers that actually help the user solve a problem right then and there.
Dynamic use cases: They don’t just say “we connect these apps.” They show specific workflows, like “Create a new row in sheets when a stripe payment fails.”
Internal linking: These pages are all cross-linked. If you’re looking at a sheets integration, they’ll suggest other apps you might want to connect to it.
Intent matching: They target “bottom-funnel” users who are ready to build a workflow, not just browse.
Canva is another beast. They target searches like “Free resume template” or “Instagram story maker.” According to storychief, they create separate pages for every keyword and optimize the content based on exactly what the person wants to do—whether that’s downloading a file or editing it online.
They use a consistent layout so the user experience doesn’t feel janky, but the data—the actual templates you see—changes based on your search. It’s a perfect mix of a visual product and a data-driven seo strategy.
These guys take “boring” data and turn it into traffic gold. Glassdoor doesn’t just give you a random number for a salary; they enrich the page with career paths, top-paying companies in your city, and even a confidence score for the data.
Zillow does something similar with real estate. They have a page for basically every address in the US. By pulling in school ratings, tax history, and “Zestimates,” they create a page that’s actually useful for a homeowner or a buyer.
If you were building something like this for a travel site, your data structure might look a little like this in a simple script:
cities = [“Paris”, “Tokyo”, “Berlin”]
activities = [“Hotels”, “Cheap eats”, “Museums”]
for city in cities:
for activity in activities:
print(f”Best {activity} in {city} – 2024 Guide”)
This is how those big aggregator sites scale. They aren’t writing 9 different articles; they’re running a loop.
Diagram 2: The workflow of a programmatic system, from data collection to template injection and final page publishing.
One thing to keep in mind is that google is getting way smarter. You can’t just spam thin pages anymore. A 2024 study by Omnius mentions that the best pSEO also aims to enhance the overall user experience and engagement, not just rank.
If your page is just a title and a button, it’s probably gonna get flagged as spam. You gotta add maps, calculators, or user reviews to make it “sticky.”
Honestly, the hardest part isn’t the code—it’s making sure the data you’re putting out there actually helps someone. Anyway, now that we’ve seen the pros do it, let’s talk about how you can actually start building this yourself.
Implementation strategies for your first pseo campaign
So, you’re ready to actually build this thing? Honestly, the hardest part of a pseo campaign isn’t the code—it’s the planning. If you get the data structure wrong at the start, you’re basically just building a very organized mess that google won’t want to touch.
Let’s break down how to actually get your hands dirty without losing your mind.
First off, you need to find your “head terms” and “modifiers.” As mentioned earlier, a head term is the big bucket (like “workbooks”) and the modifier is the specific flavor (like “for Spanish learners”).
I usually start by stalking competitors. If you see a site ranking for 500 variations of the same page, they’ve already done the legwork for you. You can use tools like Semrush or Ahrefs to export these lists. Look for “low-competition” variants—these are the long-tail gems where you can actually win.
Why do we care about long-tail? Because while “pizza” is impossible to rank for, “best gluten-free pizza in downtown Austin” is a wide-open door. When you multiply that by 100 cities, you get serious traffic.
Identify the Pattern: Find a repeatable search string.
Check Volume: Make sure people actually type these modifiers.
Assess Intent: Are they looking for info or ready to buy?
Now for the “techy” part. You need a place to store your data (the database) and a way to turn that data into pages (the cms).
Most people use Airtable because it’s basically a spreadsheet on steroids. You create columns for your Title, Meta Description, H1, and whatever specific data points you need (like price, location, or features).
Then, you connect that to a site builder. Webflow is a favorite because of its “CMS Collections” feature. You create one design, and it automatically generates a unique page for every row in your Airtable.
Diagram 3: A technical stack overview showing how Airtable connects to a CMS like Webflow to automate page creation.
If you’re in a niche like cybersecurity, things can get complicated fast. This is where a tool like grackerai comes in handy—it helps automate those specific workflows so you aren’t manually proofreading 5,000 pages of technical jargon. It’s about making the scaling part feel less like a chore.
Don’t ignore your URLs. Keep them clean. As previously discussed with the Zocdoc example, a short slug like /surgeons/charleston is way better than /category/search-results?id=12345&city=charleston.
According to Positional, keeping your slugs focused on the primary keyword is a small but vital ranking factor.
Keep it flat: Avoid burying pages 5 levels deep.
Be consistent: Use the same pattern for every page.
Use keywords: Put your modifier right in the URL.
Here is a quick snippet of how you might structure a basic data object if you were coding this yourself:
landing_pages = [
{“city”: “New York”, “service”: “Pet Sitting”, “slug”: “pet-sitting-nyc”},
{“city”: “Chicago”, “service”: “Pet Sitting”, “slug”: “pet-sitting-chicago”},
{“city”: “Austin”, “service”: “Pet Sitting”, “slug”: “pet-sitting-austin”}
]
for page in landing_pages:
print(f”Creating page: domain.com/{page[‘slug’]}”)
However, scaling quickly comes with risks that can tank your rankings if you aren’t careful. We need to talk about the “gotchas”—the stuff that gets your site flagged.
Common pitfalls and how to avoid getting penalized
Look, I won’t sugarcoat it—if you just hit “generate” on 10,000 pages and walk away, google is gonna crush your site. It happened to a buddy of mine who tried to rank for every “best plumber in [city]” across the US without adding actual data; his traffic flatlined in a week.
Google hates what they call “doorway pages.” These are thin, useless pages that only exist to capture a click and funnel you somewhere else. If your pages for “Accountant in NYC” and “Accountant in Miami” are identical except for the city name, you’re in trouble.
Add unique value: You gotta spice things up. Like how Glassdoor adds local salary bands and top-paying companies, you should pull in unique data points for every page.
AI as a helper, not the boss: Use AI to rewrite descriptions or summarize local data, but don’t let it run wild. As mentioned earlier, google wants ai content to go through a human editorial cycle—that “human-in-the-loop” thing—to avoid feeling like spam.
Even if your content is great, google might not even find it. If you have 50k pages, the googlebot might get bored and leave before it hits the good stuff.
HTML Sitemaps are king: Don’t just rely on the xml file. A public-facing html sitemap helps bots (and humans) find deep pages within 3-4 clicks.
Watch the GSC errors: If you see “Discovered – not currently indexed,” it usually means google thinks your page quality is too low to bother with.
Diagram 4: An illustration of crawl budget management, showing how internal links and sitemaps help search bots find all your pages.
Honestly, the goal is to make every page feel like someone actually sat down and wrote it. Anyway, once you’ve dodged these penalties, you gotta keep the momentum going with some long-term maintenance.
Advanced strategies and final thoughts
So, you’ve got the basics down, but how do you actually keep this machine running without google thinking you’re just a spam factory? It’s all about that mix of “human” editorial and the raw power of code.
Don’t just launch 5,000 pages on a fresh domain. As noted earlier, you need to build topical authority first. I usually tell people to write 20-30 high-quality blog posts manually before turning on the api.
This gives your site a “soul.” Once google trusts your manual content, it’s way more likely to index your programmatic stuff. Plus, you can link from your big “money” guides to your specific long-tail pages to pass that sweet ranking juice.
With ai getting better, the bar for “quality” is moving. You can’t just swap one word in a template anymore. You gotta use data to make the page actually useful—think calculators, local maps, or real-time price feeds.
Diagram 5: The advanced pSEO flywheel, connecting editorial strategy, topical authority, and data-driven scaling for sustainable rankings.
Honestly, programmatic seo is a bit like a superpower. Used wrong, you’ll get banned. Used right, you can scale a brand faster than any writing team ever could.
Start small: Test 50 pages before doing 5,000.
Internal links: As previously discussed, keep everything within 3 clicks of the home page.
Be useful: If you wouldn’t read the page, don’t publish it.
Anyway, that’s the gist of it. It’s a messy, exciting way to grow. Just keep an eye on your search console and don’t be afraid to delete thin pages that aren’t performing. Good luck out there.
*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from SSOJet – Enterprise SSO & Identity Solutions authored by SSOJet – Enterprise SSO & Identity Solutions. Read the original post at: https://ssojet.com/blog/workforce-iam-vs-ciam-identity-management-models-explained
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