Programmatic SEO – a Success Guide

Welcome to the dynamic realm of programmatic SEO, where strategic planning meets technological prowess to propel your digital presence to new heights. In this comprehensive success guide, we delve into the intricacies of programmatic SEO, unraveling the strategies and tactics that can transform your online visibility and drive sustainable success. Whether you’re a seasoned digital marketer seeking to refine your approach or a newcomer eager to unlock the potential of programmatic SEO, join us, and let’s get started.

If you’re interested in learning what Summit Scout has to offer when it comes to organic SEO services, learn more here!

What is Programmatic SEO?

Programmatic SEO entails the creation of multiple landing pages aiming to secure high rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs). All landing pages originate from a common template encompassing identical elements such as images, pricing details, reviews, etc. Subsequently, automated tools are employed to produce diverse versions of the identical page, with each variant strategically optimized for a distinct low-competition keyword.

What’s the Difference Between Regular SEO and Programmatic SEO?

Traditional SEO involves a series of procedures aimed at enhancing your website’s visibility on search engines, such as Google. It adopts a long-term approach, emphasizing the creation of high-quality content.

Within a conventional SEO strategy, a crucial component is the development of landing pages and blog posts centered around particular keywords. This aspect distinguishes it significantly from programmatic SEO.

The content creation process for traditional SEO is more time-consuming as it necessitates the generation of unique content, often targeting keywords with higher competition.

In contrast, programmatic SEO offers a swifter route to the same objective of achieving a prominent position on Google. This method revolves around the creation of multiple landing pages, all sharing an identical layout for search purposes.

These landing pages are crafted from a database, templates, and automated processes, enabling the generation of thousands of pages from a single database and template. Keyword research is also an integral part of this process, similar to the practices in traditional SEO.

Pros and Cons of Programmatic SEO

While programmatic SEO has a different approach than regular SEO, it can be a real way to gain more more traffic and conversions. Some of the advantages of programmatic SEO include:

  • After constructing your landing page template, scaling web pages becomes a straightforward task.
  • Efforts to target entire keyword categories allow you to rank for all relevant searches in one go.
  • Enhancing your search visibility on Google by targeting low-competition keywords leads to increased rankings.
  • The greater your visibility and search traffic, the higher the likelihood of building backlinks.
  • Focusing on audiences poised for purchasing can yield an uptick in sales.

Before diving head first into programmatic SEO, here are some details you should be aware of first:

  • Developing a programmatic SEO template necessitates proficiency in coding.
  • Opting for suitable no-code tools entails a higher initial investment.
  • Generating low-quality or duplicated content may breach Google’s Spam Policies.
  • Successfully indexing all of your web pages can pose a challenge.
  • Programmatic SEO remains a process demanding considerable time and research, requiring continuous maintenance and monitoring.

5 Steps to Implementing a Successful Programmatic SEO Strategy

To start your programmatic SEO journey, it’s important to research your target audience and choose long-tail keywords that are relevant to your business. Once you’ve found your keywords, build your landing page template and optimize your user experience to help users convert on your site. Here are 5 steps on how you can get started:

1) Research Your Competition

Researching your competition can give your business huge insights and direction for your landing pages. Doing so can help determine or give ideas on the format of your landing pages. It can be vital to think from your audience’s POV. Think about what your audience is thinking about including:

  • Using your products and services.
  • Locations that you offer.
  • Integrations you offer.
  • Templates you could build.
  • And more!

Once you get an idea of what your audience is looking for, write down your ideas in a spreadsheet and keep it organized. These topics can then help your keyword research become more defined.

With these ideas, go to your competitors to reflect and analyze what formats and styles they use. They can help inspire your landing pages into successful pages.

2) Find Head Terms and Modifiers 

Head terms are known to be categories of keywords you might shoot for. Modifiers are what turn head terms into long-tail keywords. An example of this would be, “best DSLR cameras” as the head term and adding the modifier, “for beginners” to the end of it.

Long-term keywords are more specific keyword search queries that aren’t as broad. They typically have lower search volumes, but they are more specific. With this in mind, your secondary landing pages may have a slightly different layout than your primary modifiers because they’re more specific. Reference your keyword research to help you decide what head terms and modifiers are best to use.

3) Choose Your Long-Tail Keywords

Once you’ve created your list of head terms and modifiers, you can go on to creating long-tail keywords. Combining both head terms and modifiers will help you create a long list of long-tail keywords. Once you have those keywords, it’s important to match the right searcher’s intent to them. When a searcher’s intent doesn’t line up with your keyword, it might not be as effective.

4) Build Your Landing Page Template

All you need is one template to create hundreds of thousands of copies of the same landing page. It’s important to remember to design and build one webpage to use as your foundation for your programmatic SEO project. The next component to set up is your content. All of the landing pages will have identical visual elements, but your content is what differentiates each page. With this in mind, decide on the layout of your landing page based on your keywords.

Next, pick a landing page builder. You can choose to build a landing page with plugins like ones from WordPress or website builder sites. Find a landing page builder that fits your needs and preferences. From there, you can choose a database to help you store information that makes up these components. You can use an organizational platform such as Airtable, Asana, Google Files, or a basic Excel spreadsheet.

Depending on the availability of resources you have, for content, you could consider using AI copywriting tools. These tools can help you see how original and SEO-friendly content is important to your SEO strategy. 

5) Optimize Your User Experience

Once your pages are lived, it’s all up to how you’ve set them up at that point. However, it’s extremely important to remember your users and how they will interact and use your landing pages. Here are a few tips to help improve your strategic programmatic SEO user experience:

  • Always have a visually eye-catching design for your landing pages.
  • Match your content to your audience’s expectations when they click on a page.
  • Always proofread or edit any AI content you decide to include.
  • Always include a clear CTA (call-to-action).
  • Monitor your web pages after they launch just to make sure they are doing well.

SEO with Summit Scout

Programmatic SEO isn’t a replacement for regular SEO. The two can work alongside each other. You should always have an SEO strategy that’s reliable. Look to Summit Scout for help. We can help you achieve this, call us today to schedule a free consultation, or visit us to learn more about our organic SEO company!

Ansley Merrill

Ansley is the Content Marketing Manager at Summit Scout. Since graduating from Utah State University with two degrees in Communication Studies and Journalism: Public Relations, Ansley specializes in creating engaging and informative SEO content for readers, customers, and partners through different marketing channels. Along with creating new content, Ansley works to keep content organized and creates and executes new content strategies. When she’s not writing, she loves to travel, visit National Parks, and loves all things Disney.