The Search Engine Optimization industry is experiencing the biggest changes it has ever experienced. With the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) tools for SEO and content creation in general it’s been a wild 18 months. One thing that AI has allowed possible for many businesses is programmatic SEO. If you have an SEO agency or have been following the industry websites you have either been presented with the option or been reading about how it can change your business. In this post, we’ll delve into what is programmatic SEO and if it is a fit for your business.
What is Programmatic SEO?
Programmatic SEO is the industry term for creating many webpages optimized for search at one time using a set of rules and existing data. The goal is a massive land grab of relevant bottom-of-the-funnel pages that will rank if your target customer searches for these terms. The main difference between this and usual massive bottom-of-the-funnel tactics is that it is done at a massive scale.
How Does one Do Programmatic SEO?
There are a few common ways, and some require no coding experience. This blog about Programmatic SEO on Zapier explains the common steps involved. This post specifically shows how to do this through Zapier
Who Is Doing Programmatic SEO Currently?
The most common example cited is TripAdvisor. They have a page created for seemingly every travel question imaginable. Their search traffic is relatively predictable, so they’re a perfect candidate for programmatic SEO. They understand the geographic areas people are searching for and the common questions people have. Such as restaurants in Toronto or hotels in Vancouver they can easily make thousands of pages listing hotels and restaurants across the many geographic areas they wish to service.
Soon, I expect most businesses that offer a service or product that can apply to many individuals will use programmatic SEO to get traffic from these high-intent and low-volume keywords. For example, if you were a real estate agent, you could create programmatic pages targeted at different streets in your region. Whereas before, you would focus on neighbourhoods or maybe even just the City, now you can get that granular. I am sure homes for sale on Dufferin Street in Toronto is relatively low volume, but if you have a page explaining your familiarity with that region, all of a sudden, you move to the front of the line for that individual looking for a realtor. Then you could do condos for lease on Younge Street in Toronto.
What Are The Risks of Programmatic SEO for my Business?
It’s a bit early to know. As mentioned at the beginning, the amount of uncertainty in SEO is at an all-time high. It’s hard to define the risks between AI content, search engine result page changes, algorithm changes, regulatory changes, and everything else keeping SEO experts up at night. Thus, programmatic SEO shows great potential today, but it has the same risks as all mass content plays.
- The biggest risk with any SEO tactic is what Google will do with your page. Will a programmatic SEO campaign penalize your site for having low-value content or gamification of its algorithm? Programmatic SEO feels like black hat SEO at worst and grey hat SEO at best. Additionally, if you go from 50-100 pages of content to 1000 overnight, that may have an impact on your rankings.
- With more pages comes more management, both in keeping the content up-to-date and developing and hosting. Is your website ready from a technical standpoint to host 500-1000 pages? Is your services and content evergreen so you don’t have to update it frequently?
- It is a true journey into the unknown. With a lot of SEO, there is uncertainty over what it will give your business. However, programmatic SEO will be new for many businesses, and there isn’t a road map out there that will say what kind of traffic it will deliver or, more importantly, whether this type of page will convert.
Should I Do Programmatic SEO for my Business?
If you have a business that has relatively predictable search terms and queries, I would suggest doing it. I believe the risk to do doing it is pretty low if you can create relevant and meaningful content that helps solve the question people are asking. I also think that tools like AI, Zapier, and content management systems like WordPress allow your agency or in-house team to achieve a programmatic SEO campaign in an affordable way for more businesses now. When TripAdvisor did its programmatic SEO campaign, I bet it took a team of developers and content writers an incredible amount of time. Today, you can achieve this without developers and with AI, even the content writing could be done easier.
Rock Bound Marketing Can Help with your Programmatic SEO Campaign
If you’re considering a programmatic SEO campaign, we can help you determine the strategy, find the right resources and assess if programmatic SEO is right for you. Contact us today to discuss your current SEO strategy and see if programmatic SEO can be added to it.
