Programmatic SEO

💎 Why It Matters

You need to cost-effectively acquire customers.

🔍 Problem

Writing editorial content is slow, expensive and hard to scale.

💡 Solution

Programmatic SEO helps you build thousands of pages for high-intent, low-volume keywords. 

Tripadvisor ranks for best {thing to do} in {city}
• Best walking tours in Lisbon
• Best restaurants in Atlanta
• Best parks in Edmonton

🏁 Players

Programmatic SEO Examples 

• Failory • Resources and interviews for startup founders.
• MentorCruise • Find programming, marketing and product management mentors.
• Legislate • Get employment, property and freelance legal contracts. 
• Zapier • Targets long-tail keywords around integrating apps. 
• G2 • Software comparison and review site.
• Canva • Design products using templates. 
• moveBuddha • Showcases popular moving routes by city. 
• Tripadvisor • Targets ‘best {thing} in {city}’ keywords.
• Payscale • Targets ‘{job title} salary’ keywords.
• Airtable • Offers use case specific templates.
• DelightChat • Ranks for ‘6 best {use case}’ apps for Shopify
• Product Hunt • Builds a related products page for each product.
• Wise • Runs a programmatic SEO strategy around exchange rates.
• Yelp • Shows lists of businesses in cities around the world. 

Programmatic SEO Tools

• Ahrefs • Find low-competition keywords.
• ScrapingBee • API-based web scraping tool.
• Simplescraper • Scrape websites and build APIs.
• Data Fetcher • Import data into Airtable.
• Webflow • Build dynamic pages based on templates.
• Placid • Generate images in bulk. 
• Airtable • Store data for page templates.
• WordPress • The most popular website builder.
• Notion • Build docs that can be published as websites. 
• ScrapeHero • Scrape website data.

🔮 Predictions

• No-code tools will become the mainmethod to build pages. 
  • Delight Chat built a Shopify App directory in one week.
  • Failory built a directory of 350+ pitch decks with Webflow. 
• Companies will use AI-writing tools to “write”content. The line between editorial and programmatic content is blurring. 
  • Legislate uses AI writing tools to generate post introductions.
  • Failory uses AI writing tools for section descriptions when testing project ideas. 
• Low-volume keywords will become more competitive. No-codetools make it easier to implement programmatic SEO strategies. Leading to more competition.

☁️ Opportunities

• Use no-code tools to store data and build pages.
  • Capture data with Simplescraper or Data Fetcher
  • Move data into a CMS such as Airtable with Zapier, Make or Craftar
  • Build templates with Webflow or Softr
• Build directory-style sitesand capture suggestions from visitors.
  • No Code List • Accepts submissions for no-code tools.
  • Startup Stash • Lets you list products for entrepreneurs. 
• Build a portfolio of projects. Failorytargets the same audience with several projects:
  • Pitch Decks • A collection of 350+ pitch decks.
  • Startup Cemetery • 120+ startups that shut down.
  • Failed Startups • 70+ categories of 400+ failed startups. 
  • Unicorns • List of 1,000+ unicorn companies and their most recent valuations.
• Create content with AI writing tools. Serbayemploys a proofreader to check results.
  • Jasper is an AI writing assistant.
  • CopyAI helps you write copy in seconds.
  • Longshot provides a set of tools like Rephraser.
  • Peppertype has trained on over 100K+ of content.
  • Rytr includes use case specific best practices and templates.
• Decide how to monetizeyour search traffic: 
  • Sell Ads | See Failory and Zillow
  • Aggregate Listings | See Product Hunt
  • Build a Marketplace | See MentorCruise
  • Become an Affiliate | See The Points Guy
  • Build a SaaS | See Zapier, Legislate and Canva
  • Sell Leads | See moveBuddha, Thumbtack and Dental Departures
• Build a vertical search engine. Answer common questions.
  • IMDB | Actors’ names
  • EquityZen | Pre-IPO stock data
  • Tripadvisor | Things to do in your city
  • Yahoo Finance | Public stock price data
  • ZoomInfo | Contacts and roles in companies
  • Truework | Income verification for a companies

🏔️ Risks

• Platform Risk• Avoid single points of failure. Depending on traffic from one channel (Google Search) puts your business at risk.
• Thin Content• Serve enough valuable content on each page. 

🔥 Hot Take

• Editorial content will continue to work best for high-volume keywords. It’s worth the effort. Programmatic SEO is an efficient approach for long-tail keywords. Dominic Monn works with an agency to write long-form content alongside generated pages.

🔑 Key Lessons

• Keyword research is the foundation of effective SEO. Including Programmatic SEO.
• Long-tail keywords have less traffic but high-intent visitors.

😠 Haters

“This sounds technical. I need to learn how to code.”
We shared a no-code “recipe” for Programmatic SEO in the opportunities section.

“This sounds spammy.”
Zapier, Failory and Legislate use these strategies effectively. Ian Nuttall says, “…the goal for me isn’t just 100,000 pages. It’s to provide value on those 100,000 pages.” 

🔗 Links

• Who should I talk to about Programmatic SEO? • The tweet behind this report. 
• Creating a Programmatic SEO Operation with No-Code • See how Failory automates content creation with no-code tools. 
• How To Create 300 Landing Pages in a Week • A step-by-step guide with a case study.

📁 Related Reports

• Marketing Funnels • Getting search traffic is one step in a marketing funnel. 
• No-Code • No-code tools are used to capture, transform and display data.
• Growth Tools • “Engineering as marketing” projects have programmatic SEO elements. 
• Data as a Service • Combine APIs to provide value to visitors. See NomadList. 
• AI-Generated Content • The line between editorial and programmatic content is blurring.

🙏 Thanks

Thanks Charles Brecque, Nico Cerdeira, Shayla Price, Ahmet Soybelli, Dominic Monn, Stewart Townsend, Kevin Galang, Serbay Arda Ayzit, Ashwin, John Bardos, Maciej Cupial, Jason Pancake, Holger Sindbaek, Sam Hickmann, Kevin Dam and Marcos Ciarrocchi. We had a great time jamming on this report.

✏️ Nyssa researched and wrote this report. Dru researched and edited.

📈 What else?

Trends PRO #0083 — Programmatic SEO has more insights.

What you’ll get:

• 35 Programmatic SEO Examples (150% More)
• 23 Programmatic SEO Tools (130% More)
• 6 Predictions (100% More)
• 13 Opportunities (160% More)
• 4 Risks (100% More)
• 4 Key Lessons (100% More)
• 11 Links (266% More)
• 14-minute audio episode with exclusive Programmatic SEO  stories, insights and opportunities.

With Trends Pro you’ll learn:

• (📈 Pro) What are SEO best practices?
• (📈 Pro) Which company grew to $6 billion with an SEO-driven strategy?
• (📈 Pro) How to turn web visitors into email subscribers?
• (📈 Pro) How can SaaS companies build proprietary acquisition channels?
• (📈 Pro) What are doorway pages?
• (📈 Pro) How to get more backlinks?
• (📈 Pro) How to leverage user-generated content?
• (📈 Pro) Why 65% of Google Searches don’t lead to clicks?
• (📈 Pro) How to automatically build new pages?

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