6 Steps to Get AI to Recommend Your Brand

But the reality is more nuanced. It’s not a magic trick that’ll instantly drive traffic.

The real differentiator nowadays isn’t the ability to create thousands of pages. It’s whether those pages actually deserve to rank.

In this guide, I’ll show you when programmatic SEO works, when it doesn’t, and how you can build your own winning programmatic SEO strategy.

What Is Programmatic SEO?

Programmatic SEO, also referred to as pSEO, is the systematic creation of content at scale using templates and data to target thousands (sometimes millions) of related search queries. The goal is to drive traffic and revenue through these automatically generated pages.

Put another way: You create landing pages at scale to rank in lots of search results.

In traditional [content marketing](/content/hub/content/what-is-content-marketing "What Is Content Marketing? Complete Beginner's Guide"/index.html), you create individual articles targeting specific keywords. With programmatic SEO, you automate page creation based on patterns in search behavior.

4 Successful Programmatic SEO Examples

Use the programmatic SEO examples below to get inspired and understand how to spot patterns that make good candidates for programmatic campaigns.

1. Wise

Wise is a global financial platform that helps users send, spend, and receive money internationally.

You’ll see Wise as a common example of programmatic SEO in action, generally for their currency converter pages.

The total number of currency converter pages across Wise’s domain is a whopping 8.5 million.

Because Wise’s main sitemap index contains 170 individual sitemaps for the currency converter pages alone:

And they rank:

2. Tripadvisor

Tripadvisor uses programmatic SEO for its location pages.

Search for “things to do in [city]” and you’ll see how they’ve dominated this pattern.

These pages collectively drive millions of organic traffic to Tripadvisor.

3. Zillow

Zillow uses programmatic SEO to generate thousands of hyper-local pages for every city, neighborhood, and property type to capture long-tail real estate search traffic.

4. Zapier

Zapier generates detailed integration pages for every possible app combination to capture search intent around software integrations.

When pSEO Makes Sense (And When It Doesn’t)

Marketplace sites, aggregators, and directories are the perfect candidates for pSEO. Think Zillow (property listings), Tripadvisor (travel destinations), or Zapier (software integrations).

The Dangers of Programmatic SEO

Programmatic SEO can look a lot like spam if you just create a bunch of thin content.

How to Know if Programmatic SEO Is Right for You

Before you invest in programmatic SEO, ask yourself the following questions:

• Do you have lots of proprietary data, user-generated content, or structured information at your disposal?
• Does your site already have rankings and authority?
• Will your hypothetical pages each provide real value individually?
• Would you be proud to show each individual page to any user?

How to Build Your Programmatic SEO Strategy in 5 Steps

Step 1: Find Scalable Keywords

The foundation of programmatic SEO isn’t finding high-volume keywords. It’s about identifying patterns that you can target systematically.

Step 2: Collect and Structure Data

Every successful programmatic SEO project thrives because of its data.

Step 3: Create Quality Content Templates

Templates are the engine of programmatic SEO.

Step 4: Technical Setup (Based on Skill Level)

Step 5: Monitor and Improve Your SEO

Like any SEO strategy, programmatic SEO is an ongoing effort.

Is Programmatic SEO Really the Way to Go?

It’s hopefully clear by now that programmatic SEO can yield some pretty impressive results. But it should also be clear that it’s not the right choice for everyone.