Programmatic SEO

Location pages, integration pages, product comparison pages and “X for Y” use-case pages are common examples. One template and a table of data can produce hundreds of pages.

Google judges programmatic pages by purpose, not by how they were made. In March 2024, Google introduced its scaled content abuse policy, defined as many pages generated mainly to manipulate search rankings and not to help users. Google said the policy applies whether the pages come from automation, people or both. Templates are fine. Pages that exist only to catch a keyword variation are not.

Where the line sits

Works	Fails
Each page uses data that differs page to page: local service details, specs, pricing, availability	Only the keyword in the H1 and title changes
Each page answers a search real people make	Pages for every possible combination, searched or not
Pages link into a clear site structure	Thousands of pages with no internal links pointing to them
You would publish the page with no search engine in mind	The page exists only to rank

Programmatic SEO works when the input data is different for every page. It fails when the template is the only content, which is the thin-content trap Google’s spam policy targets. The question to ask of any template is what a reader learns on page 50 that they didn’t learn on page 1. If the answer is “the city name”, don’t publish it.

A programmatic build that worked

For a Canadian telecom provider, keyword gap analysis showed demand for business phone and internet services by city. We built location and service pages from that research, each with details specific to the service and area. The telecom programmatic SEO case study covers how the pages were planned and linked.

Common mistakes

• Publishing every combination in the dataset at once, before testing a sample.

• Pages that differ only by the keyword.

• No internal links to the new pages, so Google finds them only through the sitemap.

• Generating page copy with AI tools and adding nothing a reader can’t get elsewhere.