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With the rise of AI and advanced automation tools, many question: Is programmatic SEO dead? Has AI replaced it?
In reality, programmatic SEO is far from obsolete.
Instead, it has evolved.
Integrating programmatic SEO with AI has become more powerful and sophisticated than ever.
In this article, we’ll go through the best examples of programmatic SEO in action, what we can learn from them, and how to implement these strategies to boost your website's performance.
Let’s dive in.
What Is Programmatic SEO?
Programmatic SEO (pSEO) involves using automated methods and data-driven techniques to create and optimize large quantities of web pages.
While a big focus is improving visibility and ranking on search engines, pSEO also aims to enhance the overall user experience, content relevance, and engagement.
This includes optimizing for search engines (SEO), as well as ensuring that the content is valuable and accessible to users, and potentially integrating with other marketing and analytics tools to measure and improve performance continuously.
Although search engines are a significant aspect of pSEO, the ultimate goal is to create high-quality, scalable content that effectively serves search engines and end-users.
Where Can You Apply Programmatic SEO?
Programmatic SEO can be effectively applied across various types of websites to enhance scalability and efficiency, such as:
- Marketplaces and Aggregators: Websites that aggregate data from various sources, such as real estate (Zillow, Realtor.com), travel (Expedia, TripAdvisor), and job boards (Indeed, Glassdoor)
- Comparison and Review Sites: Fintech platforms that compare financial products like loans, credit cards, insurance, and investment options (e.g., NerdWallet, Credit Karma) use pSEO to generate and optimize comparison pages and product reviews.
- SaaS Companies: Software-as-a-Service providers with extensive resource centers, documentation, and customer support pages, such as HubSpot and Salesforce, use pSEO to optimize these resources for search.
- Educational Platforms: Online learning platforms and course aggregators, such as Coursera, Udemy, and Khan Academy, use pSEO to manage course descriptions, reviews, and resource pages.
- Content Publishers and Media: News websites, blogs, and content networks like Huffington Post, Medium, and BuzzFeed leverage pSEO to produce and optimize vast amounts of content quickly.
- E-commerce Platforms: Large online retailers like Amazon, eBay, and Walmart use pSEO to create and optimize product pages, category pages, and landing pages.
Benefits of Programmatic SEO
There are different benefits you can gain when it comes to programmatic SEO, such as:
- Scalability: It allows for the efficient optimization of thousands of pages.
- Consistency: Ensures all pages follow a consistent SEO strategy and structure.
- Timeliness: Quickly adapts to trends, keywords, and user behavior changes.
- Resource Efficiency: Reduces the need for extensive manual SEO efforts, saving time and resources.
6 Best Programmatic SEO Examples to Follow
Programmatic SEO can be exceptionally powerful when executed well. Here are some of the best examples of programmatic SEO in action across different types of websites:
1. Wise
Wise, a fintech company focused on global money transfers, uses a programmatic SEO content strategy to capture a broad spectrum of long-tail keywords in the international finance domain.
Wise leverages programmatic SEO to target long-tail keywords related to currency conversions, such as ‘currency-converter/aud-to-eur-rate.’ These currency converter pages serve dual purposes:
- They provide valuable information and
- Act as landing pages to direct users toward Wise’s money transfer services.
Why Is This A Good Example?
Wise enriches these programmatically generated pages with several key data points:
- Titles featuring the names of the two currencies - ‘Australian dollars to Euros today.’
- Currency converter input and output fields
- Call-to-action (CTA) buttons - ‘Track the exchange rate’ and ‘Send money.’
- Currency conversion charts
- CTA for email alerts about price changes
- Comparisons with other money transfer services, like Western Union, Instarem, Remitly, etc.
- Lists of top currencies at the moment
- A 3-step guide on how to convert Australian dollars to Euros and top pairings
- Options to change the source currency
- Conversion rates for the selected currencies
Another important aspect of Wise’s strategy is its Resources page.
With plenty of helpful guides, FAQs, and comparisons, Wise subtly promotes its service.
For example, by creating content around long-tail keywords like “SWIFT code for City bank,” Wise captures a broad range of user queries related to international finance, increasing their visibility in search results.
While the content is mainly informative, subtle CTAs guide users toward Wise’s money transfer services.
This approach effectively converts users who find the content useful.
2. Yelp
Yelp uses programmatic SEO to manage thousands of business listings across different categories and locations.
Key strategies include:
- Automated Local Pages: Yelp automatically generates pages for every business, incorporating user reviews, ratings, photos, and other relevant information.
- Dynamic Meta Tags: Each page has dynamically generated meta tags based on the business name, category, and location.
- Structured Data: Yelp uses schema markup extensively to help search engines understand the content on each page.
Why Is This A Good Example?
Yelp is an excellent example of programmatic SEO because it efficiently manages a vast database of business listings while maintaining high search visibility and user engagement. Here's why:
1. Comprehensive Coverage
Yelp's programmatic SEO allows it to cover an extensive range of businesses across various industries and locations.
This ensures that Yelp pages frequently appear among the top search results whenever users search for local businesses, providing comprehensive information for virtually any query.
2. Real-Time Updates
Yelp continuously updates its pages with new user-generated content, such as reviews and photos.
This real-time updating mechanism ensures that the information remains relevant and fresh, crucial for maintaining user trust and engagement.
3. Scalability
The automated nature of Yelp's SEO strategy enables it to scale effortlessly as more businesses are added to the platform.
There are a variety of categories, from restaurants to massage spots, to choose from.
This scalability means that Yelp can handle millions of listings without a proportional increase in manual workload, making it efficient and cost-effective.
4. Enhanced Local SEO
Yelp's focus on local search optimization ensures that users quickly find the most relevant local businesses.
This local SEO emphasis helps small and medium-sized businesses gain visibility and attract local customers, benefiting both users and business owners.
5. Monetization and Advertisements
Yelp leverages its high traffic and search visibility to offer advertising opportunities to businesses.
This creates an additional revenue stream while providing businesses targeted advertising options to reach potential customers more effectively.
3. Zillow
Zillow, a real estate marketplace, leverages programmatic SEO to handle millions of property listings.
Effective techniques include:
- Property Pages: Automatically created for each property with detailed descriptions, images, and metadata.
- Neighborhood and City Pages: Generated pages for neighborhoods and cities with aggregated data on market trends, school ratings, and local amenities.
- User Data Integration: Incorporates user-generated content like reviews and property estimates to enhance page content.
Why Is This A Good Example?
Zillow's business model revolves around listing properties for sale or rent nationwide, maintaining a vast database that distinguishes it as a leading resource in real estate:
- Zillow automates the synchronization of its website with real estate listings, ensuring immediate updates whenever new properties become available.
- Zillow populates location-specific pages for nearly every zip code, city, and street across America, enhancing its visibility in search engine results for real estate queries.
4. TripAdvisor
Who hasn't visited TripAdvisor at least once when planning a trip? It is a go-to website with a wide database of travel-related information.
It automates the creation of detailed pages for countless destinations, hotels, and attractions, ensuring users can effortlessly access comprehensive travel information.
Their SEO-related tactics include:
- Location-Specific Pages: Automatically generates pages for destinations, hotels, and attractions with user reviews, ratings, and photos.
- SEO-Friendly URL Structure: Ensures each page has an optimized URL structure with relevant keywords. For example, for two different Zanzibar hotels, the keywords ‘Zanzibar_Island_Zanzibar_Archipelago’ are also included.
- Content Enrichment: Leverages user-generated content to update and enrich the pages continuously, keeping them relevant and fresh.
Why Is This A Good Example?
TripAdvisor uses programmatic SEO to manage an extensive database of travel-related information, including hotels, restaurants, and attractions:
- SEO Approach:
Optimizes URLs with relevant keywords to enhance search engine visibility, ensuring higher rankings and more traffic.
- Things To Do section:
The Things to Do section features a range of activities that travelers highly rate and frequently book. The experiences are divided into categories like full-day tours, day trips, cultural tours, attractions, etc.
Each page targets a specific keyword (e.g., ‘The 10 Best Things to Do in Zanzibar’, ‘The 15 Best Things to Do in Bali’), allowing it to rank for these keywords and attract leads. Restaurants, flights, cruises, and other pages follow the same pattern, which allows Trip Advisor to target various categories at once and ensure strong search engine positioning.
- Fresh and Engaging Content:
- Keeps content fresh by automatically updating it with user-generated reviews, ratings, and photos.
- Continuous information flow keeps users informed and engaged.
- Regular updates with real user content enhance the platform's authority in search engine rankings.
- Tailored Content for Travelers:
- Provides tailored content for both local getaways and international adventures.
- Ensures the content addresses its diverse user base's specific travel needs and interests.
- Targeted Advertising and Partnerships:
- Uses its substantial user base to offer targeted advertising opportunities.
- Forms partnerships with travel providers to enhance user experience.
- These strategies improve user experience and expand TripAdvisor's revenue opportunities.
5. Amazon
Amazon's SEO strategy for millions of products is a prime example of programmatic SEO:
- Dynamic Product Pages: Product descriptions, specifications, reviews, and Q&A sections automatically populate each product page.
- Internal Linking: Uses algorithms to create related product suggestions and internal links to enhance user navigation and SEO.
- Schema Markup: Extensive use of structured data to improve search visibility and result in rich snippets.
Why Is This A Good Example?
Amazon shows how programmatic SEO works through its A9 algorithm, which aims to improve user experience and boost sales. The algorithm considers several factors when deciding how to rank products in search results:
- How well a product matches a user's search
- Its price and availability
- The variety of products available, and
- How well the product has sold in the past.
Sellers on Amazon also use SEO techniques to improve their product listings. They follow steps like:
- Keyword research: Figuring out which words people use to search for their products (e.g., using different tools to identify high-intent keywords related to "wireless headphones").
- Optimizing Titles and Descriptions: Writing attractive titles and descriptions (e.g., "Premium Noise-Cancelling Wireless Headphones – Over 30 Hours Battery Life, Bluetooth 5.0" and a detailed description highlighting key features and benefits).
- Enhanced Product Page Setup: Making sure their product pages are set up well with tags and images (tags like "Bluetooth headphones" and "noise-canceling" and ensuring the page is mobile-friendly).
These changes help their products get seen more often, clicked on more frequently, and ultimately, bought more.
Amazon handles a huge number of products, so it uses automated tools to manage all this information efficiently. This allows them to focus on:
- Tracking and updating product information in real time.
- Use data analytics to enhance the relevance and quality of product listings.
- Provide personalized recommendations and ensure accurate search results.
- Maintain agility in responding to market trends and customer demands.
6. Airbnb
Airbnb's programmatic SEO strategy helps manage listings for thousands of properties worldwide:
- Location and Property Pages: Automatically generates unique pages for each listing with comprehensive details, reviews, and high-quality images. For example, they used URLs like ‘airbnb.com/country/stays.’ This approach allowed them to easily create pages for all the locations they wanted to include.
- Localized Content: Provides localized content for different regions, enhancing the relevance of pages for local searches.
- SEO Automation: Uses automation to ensure consistent optimization across all listings, including dynamic meta tags and structured data.
Why Is This A Good Example
Airbnb exemplifies programmatic SEO through its strong focus on user experience and site architecture.
Their website is designed to be user-friendly, making it easy for visitors to search for accommodations, view property details, and book stays.
Each property listing on Airbnb includes essential information such as:
- High-quality images
- Detailed descriptions
- Amenities,
- Pricing.
These steps enhance both user satisfaction and SEO.
Hosts optimize property listings by crafting titles with relevant keywords, like "Luxury Oceanfront Villa in Malibu," and incorporating keywords naturally into descriptions and tags, such as "pet-friendly" or "private pool," to boost visibility.
Airbnb also creates thousands of dynamic template pages based on different criteria, including:
- Location pages ("Paris Apartments"),
- Property types ("Treehouse Escapes"),
- Amenities ("Hot Tub Retreats"), allowing them to scale content and meet various search intents efficiently.
Additionally, Airbnb uses powerful internal linking strategies connecting related pages to improve crawlability, distribute authority, and enhance overall SEO performance.
For instance, a Paris property listing might link to other Parisian listings, and a blog post about "Top Beach Destinations" could link to relevant property pages, further strengthening their SEO strategy.
How Can You Use These Examples To Your Benefit?
Using these examples of programmatic SEO can significantly enhance your website's visibility, user engagement, and scalability:
- Automate Content Creation: Just like Yelp and Zillow, automate the generation of pages for listings, products, or services. This allows you to manage a large volume of content efficiently and keep information up-to-date in real-time.
- Optimize URL Structure: Ensure your URLs are logical and SEO-friendly, incorporating relevant keywords. For instance, use URLs like “yourwebsite.com/city/service” to improve search visibility.
- Leverage User-Generated Content: Integrate user reviews, ratings, and photos to keep your content fresh and engaging, similar to how TripAdvisor and Amazon do. This continuous flow of new content helps maintain high search rankings and user trust.
- Utilize Structured Data: Implement schema markup to help search engines understand your content better, enhancing your chances of appearing in rich snippets. Yelp and Amazon effectively use structured data for this purpose.
- Focus on Local SEO: If your business has a local aspect, optimize for local searches. Create localized content and pages to target specific regions, much like Yelp and Airbnb, which improves visibility for local queries and attracts nearby customers.
- Implement Dynamic Meta Tags: Use automation to generate dynamic meta tags based on the content of each page, ensuring consistency and relevancy across your site, as demonstrated by Yelp and Airbnb.
What Can Omnius Do For You?
At Omnius, we specialize in holistic programmatic SEO for innovative SaaS and Fintech companies.
We aim to make organic growth programmable and surpass industry standards by utilizing both creative and deeply technical nuances of SEO and helping you develop high-converting web pages at scale.
The Omnius Approach
- Data Sourcing: We gather extensive data from public websites, analytics platforms, keyword research tools, and competitor analysis. We analyze this data deeply to create logical clusters related to your product.
- Technical Audit: We conduct thorough technical audits to identify issues and opportunities for improvement. We also identify broken links, optimize site speed, and ensure mobile-friendliness.
- Strategy Development: Based on our nuanced data analysis, we create a comprehensive programmatic SEO strategy. This includes a detailed website treemap, content production and optimization plan, and technical enhancements.
- 0-1 Implementation: Our team combines automation tools and manual efforts to turn the SEO strategy into reality, ensuring the website aligns with search engine algorithms. We continuously track and analyze data, helping you implement changes that lead to new growth loops.
- Continuous Optimization: SEO is ever-evolving, and so is our process. We keep analyzing and optimizing existing data, always seeking new programmatic growth opportunities.
Our programmatic SEO growth sits at the intersection of creative and technical expertise, enabling us to deliver both.
Interested to learn how?
Book a call with us today and discover how we can help you transform your online presence and start bringing leads at scale!
