How does TripAdvisor rank for “Best Hotel in [City]” for every city on Earth? They didn’t write 50,000 articles manually. They used Programmatic SEO (pSEO). pSEO is the method of creating landing pages at scale using a database and templates.
How It Works
Instead of writing one page at a time, you build a “Headless CMS” structure:
- Data Source: A spreadsheet or database with rows of data (e.g., City, Population, Best Hotel, Price).
- Template: A page layout with placeholders like
{City Name}and{Best Hotel}. - Automation: A script generates thousands of unique pages by injecting data into the template.
The “Thin Content” Trap
Google hates thin programmatic content. To avoid a penalty, every generated page must offer unique value.
Do Not: Just swap the city name and keep the text identical.
Do: Inject unique data points (weather data, local map, unique reviews) so the page feels custom-made.
Use Cases for pSEO
- Travel: “Things to do in {City}”
- SaaS: “{Competitor} vs {Your Tool}”
- Local Service: “Plumbers in {Neighborhood}”
- Jobs: “Salary for {Job Title} in {State}”
Conclusion
Programmatic SEO is the nuclear weapon of growth marketing. It requires technical skill (Python/SQL) but allows you to dominate entire verticals that manual writers can’t touch.
