Programmatic SEO: what it is, when it works and when Google steps in

Programmatic SEO is creating hundreds or thousands of pages at once from one template and a file of data. It works when every page has its own useful information. It goes wrong when the pages differ by one word only. With AI it is easier than ever to do. That also makes it easier than ever to do wrong.

It sounds attractive: make five hundred pages with AI in an afternoon and watch the visitors pour in. Sometimes that works. More often it ends with a site Google no longer trusts.

How does programmatic SEO work?

You need three things.

A pattern in search queries. People search the same question with one changing part. “Realtor in [city]”. “Connect [app A] with [app B]”. “Exchange rate [currency] to [currency]”.

A file with data. Per row, the data for one page.

A template. The structure of the page, with places where the data is filled in.

The software walks through the file and turns every row into a page. A thousand rows, a thousand pages.

Where does it work well?

For businesses that have a lot of unique data of their own.

Type of business	Page per	What makes each page unique
Real estate site	City or neighborhood	The current listings and prices there
Travel site	Destination	Hotels, weather, flights, reviews
Software company	Integration with another app	What the integration does and how to set it up
Comparison site	Product or provider	Prices, terms, ratings
Job site	Role and city	The openings available now

See what they have in common? The page about homes in Columbus shows different homes from the page about Dayton. The visitor gets something they do not get on the other page. That is the test.

Where does Google draw the line?

In March 2024 Google tightened its spam policies with a rule on “scaled content abuse”. It is in Google’s spam policies.

The core: it is not allowed to create many pages whose main purpose is ranking higher in the search results without helping the visitor. Whether AI, people or a combination made them makes no difference to Google.

There is also an older rule on doorway pages: pages that look alike, each aimed at a slightly different query, that all send the visitor to the same place.

What happens when you cross the line: Google does not index the pages, or removes them. In the worst case your whole site loses trust. Then your good pages drop too.

The test: would you make this page if Google did not exist?

This is the question we ask ourselves. Google uses a similar question in its own guidelines.

A page with the current listings in Columbus you would make without Google too. Visitors want to see that.

A page “Plumber in Columbus” with the same text as “Plumber in Dayton”, only with another city name, you would not make. Nobody gains anything from it. It only exists for the search engine.

The best-known example: city pages

A plumber from Dallas works all over the metro area. Someone advises him to make a page for every city in the region. With AI that is forty pages in an hour.

Every page has the same structure: “Need a plumber in Garland? We are ready to help in Garland and surrounding areas.” Then the same five paragraphs.

This is how it usually goes:

• Google indexes a few of the forty and ignores the rest.
• The pages that are indexed rank low.
• The site now has forty thin pages that drag down the average.

What does work is fewer and more real. Five pages for the five cities where he works most. On each page:

• two or three jobs he did there, with photos
• a review from a customer in that city
• how fast he can be there from Dallas
• something that belongs to that place, such as many 1960s homes with galvanized pipes

Those are five pages that tell a visitor from Garland something they do not read on the Dallas page. More on being found locally is in getting found for “near me” searches.

Programmatic SEO and AI: the temptation

Until a few years ago you needed a programmer and a good data file for programmatic SEO. That held most businesses back.

Now you ask an AI to write 500 words for every row. The pages read fine. Every text is worded differently.

But worded differently is not the same as different information. Forty texts that say the same thing in other words are still forty copies of the same page to Google.

AI is useful here as a helper with real data. If you have twenty specifications per product in a table, AI can turn them into a readable paragraph. The information is real. AI just makes it nicer to read.

What is the difference with automating SEO?

The two are often confused. They are almost opposites.

	Programmatic SEO	Automating SEO
What you do	Create many new pages	Make existing pages better
For whom	Businesses with lots of own data	Any website
Risk	High if the pages are thin	Low, every change can be undone
Pace	Hundreds of pages at once	A few improvements per week
What Google thinks	Depends on the value per page	No objection: your pages get better

With automating SEO no page is added. The software improves the title, description and internal links of pages that already exist. That is the maintenance business owners never get to. How that works is in automating SEO with AI.

That is also how we built GreatCompany. At most five improvements per week, to existing pages. Blog posts are off by default, and a new post always comes to you for approval first. That pace is deliberately low. What it looks like on a WordPress site is on GreatCompany for WordPress.

What should a small business do?

For most small businesses, programmatic SEO is not a good idea. You do not have the data. And the gain you are after is closer.

Three things that pay off more:

Finish your existing pages. A service page with a good title, a price indication and answers to customer questions does more than twenty new pages. The steps are in improve your SEO.

Build one cluster around your main service. A main page and five articles that each answer a real question. How is in topic clusters.

Write new pages one at a time. With your own facts in them. AI may help with the text. The method is in having AI write your blog.

Do you have a lot of your own data, such as an online store with thousands of products or a platform with providers? Then programmatic SEO can work. Have a specialist look before you put a thousand pages live. Undoing is harder than starting.

First get everything out of the pages you have

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