Programmatic SEO v2

When to Use pSEO

Good candidates:

• Location + service combinations ("plumber in {city}")
• Tool/product comparisons ("{Tool A} vs {Tool B}")
• Integration pages ("{Product} + {Integration}")
• Glossary/definition pages ("{Term} definition")
• Directory/listing pages ("{Category} in {Location}")
• Alternative pages ("{Product} alternatives")

Bad candidates (will get penalized):

• Thin pages with just swapped city names
• Auto-generated content with no unique value
• Doorway pages targeting variations of one keyword

Pipeline

1. Data Collection

• Identify all variable combinations (cities × services, tools × tools)
• Gather unique data per page (statistics, local info, product details)
• Validate data quality (no empty fields, accurate information)

2. Template Design

Each template needs:

• Unique intro (not just "{city} + {service}" boilerplate)
• Data-driven content (real statistics, comparisons, facts per entity)
• User value (answers a real question, not just keyword targeting)
• Internal links (to related pages within the programmatic set)
• Schema markup (appropriate type per page category)

3. Quality Thresholds

• Minimum 500 unique words per page (not counting boilerplate)
• At least 3 data points unique to that page
• No more than 40% shared content across pages
• Every page must answer at least one question a real user would have

4. Internal Linking

• Hub pages link to all children (e.g., "Plumbers" → all city pages)
• Child pages link to hub and 3-5 siblings
• Cross-link between related categories
• Breadcrumb navigation on every page

5. Indexing Strategy

• XML sitemap for all programmatic pages
• Noindex thin pages until they have enough content
• Monitor Search Console for "Crawled — currently not indexed"
• Submit in batches (1000-5000 pages at a time)

Page Templates

Detailed templates by type: references/template-patterns.md Data pipeline architecture: references/data-pipeline.md

References

• references/template-patterns.md — Templates for each page type
• references/data-pipeline.md — Data collection and generation pipelines