programmatic-seo

# Programmatic SEO Done well, one template covers thousands of real searches. Done badly, it is a mass of thin pages that damages the whole domain. ## Qualify before building All four must hold: 1. **A real query pattern** with verified volume across many instances — not one popular term and a long tail of zeroes. 2. **Data you actually have**, at quality, for most instances. Missing data produces empty pages, and empty pages are the failure mode. 3. **Genuine per-page value.** If two pages differ only by a swapped noun, they are duplicates however they are generated. 4. **A reason to be better** than what ranks now. Usually completeness, freshness, or data nobody else has. Fail any one and the answer is fewer, better pages. ## Building - **Design the best single page first**, by hand, and confirm it is genuinely useful. Then find what in it is variable. Templating before you know the good page scales a mediocre one. - **Vary the substance, not just the strings.** Each page needs data, comparisons, or context specific to it. - **Set a minimum data threshold.** Below it, the page does not get generated. This single rule prevents most programmatic disasters. - **Internal linking is not optional** — thousands of orphaned pages will not be crawled. Build hub pages and cross-links into the template. - **Roll out in batches.** Publish a few hundred, wait for indexation and performance, then continue. A full launch that goes wrong is hard to unwind. ## ...