programmatic-seo
Programmatic SEO
Generate hundreds or thousands of pages from a template and a dataset — but decide whether it pays back before writing the first one. Programmatic SEO fails in a predictable way: a team multiplies page count by search volume, gets a large number, builds ten thousand pages, and discovers that most were never indexed and almost none rank.
The arithmetic that matters isn't pages × volume. It's the funnel: how many pages get indexed, how many of those reach page one, and what each one is worth. Run that first. It kills most programmatic projects, which is the point — the ones it doesn't kill are worth doing properly.
The second thing that decides the outcome is whether each page deserves to exist. A page assembled from a template and facts anyone can look up is what Google's scaled-content-abuse policy targets. Unique per-page data is not a nice-to-have; it is the difference between an asset and a liability.
When to use
The user has a dataset, a directory, or a head-term × modifier pattern and wants to turn it into search-targeted pages at scale. For a single page, use seo-content-brief instead.
Before you start
- Read the brand/product context (
.agents/product-marketing.md) for the offer these pages should route toward. - Establish the pattern. What's the head term, what varies, and where does the data come from? "Best {tool} for {industry}" needs both lists and a real basis for the ranking.
- Find the unique data. For each page, what exists that a competitor couldn't regenerate in an afternoon? If the answer is nothing, the honest recommendation is not to build.
- Get the economics. Conversion rate, value per conversion, and what the build actually costs. Without these the model is decoration.