What is Programmatic SEO? Programmatic SEO Explained by an Expert!

Key Takeaways

hey there welcome back to the funnel YouTube channel I'm thas an SEO expert with over 10 years of experience helping businesses increase their online visibility today I'll be discussing the exciting topic of programmatic SEO if you're looking to scale your content creation and increase the number of queries your website ranks for then this video is for you so let's get into it first let us Define what programmatic SEO is Ryan law the director of content marketing at ahrs defines it as follows programmatic SEO refers to the creation of keyword targeted pages in an automated or semi-automated way simply put is the process of creating a large number of web pages following a repeatable pattern using automation programmatic SEO or P SEO as it is also called can be used to generate highly converting content quickly and cost effectively as I see it there are three Core Concepts at the heart of programmatic SEO the first is automation this is the backb of programmatic SEO automation allows us to create Pages at scale with little manual effort for example at funnel we use a database and templates to generate Pages at skill each time we add a new row to the database our CMS automatically creates a new web page the second core concept of P SEO longtail keywords longtail keywords are highly specific Search terms often containing three or more words and the third core concept matching user intent even though pages are template based they still must meet the searcher's intent this ensures the content remains relevant and useful if your page doesn't match user intent you're not going to be able to rank now let's take a quick pause here to fully understand how to approach B SEO it's crucial to recognize what kind of company or website you're working with an aggregator or an integrator aggregators typically collect and display data from multiple sources while integrators create and distribute their own products or content so let me explain this with two examples booking.com an aggregator and pellaton an integrator if you are doing AO for booking.com your focus is on leveraging the fast amount of existing data such as Hotel ratings prices and locations this data already lives in their database so programmatic SEO for an negator means using that data to create valuable content Auto atically on the other hand if you're working for a company like Paton which offers a limited range of products programmatic SEO Works differently since pellaton doesn't have as much product data you'd first need to create a database fill it with content or data points like workout data or product features and then you can create SEO driven Pages programmatically this distinction between aggregators and integrators is key because it influences how you should approach programmatic SEO the growth expert Kevin indig wrote about this in his 2021 blog post integrator versus aggregator growth and I really recommend you checking that blog post out for further insights at funnel we've successfully implemented programmatic SEO in two main ways connector Pages our connector Pages provide information about different connectors in our product using a template populated with data from our database and to tie back to our earlier Point well this database already existed when we started PSO it was quite limited it only contained the name of each platform funnel integrates with and the logo we built out the database further to use it for programmatic SEO we included specific data that only we have such as the most popular metrics and dimensions for each connector we also use generative AI to create short about texts for each platform x2y Pages the x2y pages show website visitors how to transfer data from one platform to another using funnel in this case we actually combine two databases one contains information about different platforms marketers use such as Google analytics or Google ads the other database contains information about so-called data destinations for example lucer Studio we then combine these databases to make a web page for each combination of data connector Plus data destination we are certainly not the only ones using programmatic SEO let's let's take a look at some examples from other companies zier zier creates Pages for various app Integrations using templates to populate content automatically user pilot user pilot generates comparison Pages for various tools and then suggest their own tool as the better alternative Trip Adviser Trip Advisor creates category Pages for restaurants using their extensive database of user reviews and ratings what are the benefits and challenges of programmatic SEO first the benefits scalability you can create hundreds or maybe thousands of pages in a lot less time than if you were to create these pages from scratch easy to update changes in the database or the template automatically reflect on all the pages that use them for example if a platform funnel connects to changes their name we simply change the name in the database instead of going into all the different pages where that platform is mentioned High intent targeting specific longtail keywords with P SEO can drive highly relevant visitors to your site and finally it is cost effective since doing less manual work reduces costs there are also some challenges with P SEO for example setting up and maintaining programmatic SEO requires technical expertise in other words you will need to work with a web developer and depending on the CMS you are using you may also need help from a backand developer there is a risk of pages being too similar and not providing enough unique value you can monitor if this is the case by looking at the indexation report in Google search console there are two things you want to look out for the first one is discovered currently not indexed and the second is crawled currently not indexed if the number of pages in those categories is increasing your content is of too low quality it can be that the content is too similar to other content or that the pages simply don't meet search intent so if you encounter these issues don't hesitate to go back to the drawing board and refine your approach to programmatic SEO so with all of that said are you ready to incorporate programmatic SEO into your SEO strategy if yes here's how I would advise you to start step one identify scalable keywords start by researching keywords that have multiple variations tools like keywordtool.io can help you find relevant longtail keywords that can be skilled across numerous Pages think about queries that your audience might search for such such as best product in location step two build your database create a reliable database that will feature programmatic Pages this could include product data location information or any relevant data you add ensure that your data is accurate and regularly updated to maintain content quality step three develop templates design templates for your pages that can be populated automatically using the data from your database make sure these templates are as your friendly with proper metadata internal linking and user focused content step four automate content creation use tools like air table web flow or custom scripts to automate the creation and Publishing of your pages this will save time and allow you to skill quickly if you are using HubSpot CMS you don't need additional tools HubSpot already has this feature built in step five Monitor and optimize once your pages are live monitor their performance using tools like Google search console and Google analytics pay attention to metrics like indexation rates and user engagement if necessary refine your approach to improve quality and relevance that's all for today's video on programmatic SEO if you like this video let us know what topic you want us to cover next and don't forget to subscribe to our Channel where you'll learn more about marketing reporting data visualization and a lot more all the great 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