Programmatic SEO: How to build 20,000 pages for long tail search terms at scale

What is programmatic SEO for online businesses?

Programmatic SEO aims to create large volumes of pages with the same level of detail and user experience as manually built ones. When executed correctly, it enhances a website's visibility in search results, particularly for high-intent keywords, resulting in improved rankings, increased traffic, and higher conversion rates.

It involves using a database, templates, and specialised code to automatically generate and optimise product landing pages at scale, often numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

Typically, companies that implement programmatic SEO have a design template for each type of landing page, with only the written content or product details differing from one page to another. For instance, "Cheap Flights to Tokyo" would share the same layout and design as "Cheap Flights to Spain" but with unique content. These pages usually serve a commercial purpose, with the ultimate aim of driving conversions.

Programmatic SEO tools use product data like titles, descriptions, and prices to create and optimise landing pages for specific keywords.

What are the benefits of programmatic SEO?

Programmatic SEO helps target demand for products and services by capturing niche traffic that other online businesses often overlook. It allows you to reach bottom-of-funnel users who know exactly what they want, without requiring your dev team to manually create pages. It also offers a live testing platform to experiment with and scale new categories.

With programmatic SEO, you can:

• Achieve faster and higher rankings at scale
• Automatically create thousands of pages targeting long-tail keywords
• Avoid delays in the Jira backlog for minor tasks
• Reduce reliance on expensive Google Ads with declining returns

How does programmatic SEO attract bottom-of-funnel users?

When people know exactly what they want, they tend to search using long-tail keywords (3 or more words). To attract these ready-to-buy users, businesses need to appear in search results for these specific terms.

For large websites, targeting these users can be a challenge due to the sheer volume of long-tail keywords. While each may have low search volume, the number of possible terms is vast, making manual page creation impractical.

For example, Tripadvisor needs its extensive directory of hotels to be discoverable by users globally. While their on-site search is robust, how do they capture users searching for "best hotels in London" or "best restaurants in Alice Springs"?

Tripadvisor creates thousands of landing pages, each targeting a specific long-tail search term, such as "best budget-friendly things to do in England" or "best luxury hotels in France". These pages rank well because they are closely aligned with how users search.

This strategy benefits both businesses and users: businesses capture unmet demand, and users find highly relevant pages that seem tailor-made for their search.

This method is less about writing long-form content that meets core web vitals and more about providing a seamless user experience, displaying products and services exactly as users expect to find them.

What types of businesses use programmatic SEO?

Marketplaces and companies like Tripadvisor and Skyscanner have successfully avoided the slow, manual process of creating landing pages at scale while maintaining quality. However, this approach is valuable for many other industries:

• eCommerce businesses with large product catalogues can optimise thousands of product pages for SEO.
• Media and publishing companies can optimise their websites and articles for search engines to boost traffic and engagement.
• B2B businesses can use programmatic SEO to optimise product and service pages, attracting more qualified leads and boosting conversions.

Building thousands of multi-product landing pages for long-tail search

Many online tools can help create Product Listing Pages at scale, but they often have limited functionality. For example, Instapages only allows you to add keyword-optimised content to page titles, while tools like Every Mundo are designed solely for travel sites and don't work across different types of content.

So, how can you build multi-product landing pages at scale for long-tail search?

Here’s the process if you rely on internal dev teams:

• Initial research: Work with your engineering, marketing, SEO, and product teams to identify category opportunities on your site using tools like Google Analytics.
• Keyword research: Gather at least 10,000 long-tail keywords that align with the categories you're targeting, using tools like SEMrush or Ubersuggest.
• Approval: Present the data to your CFO to get sign-off on the costs, timeline, and resource allocation.
• Submit your ticket: Request that the engineering team build the landing pages.
• Page building: Depending on the size of your team and the number of keywords, creating a single landing page can take from a few hours to several weeks.
• Design (including copywriting): 15-80 hours
• Development: 24-80 hours
• DevOps: 8-24 hours
• Quality Assurance (QA): 8-16 hours

Even if your team manages to create thousands of multi-product landing pages, they may take up to 12 months to be indexed and ranked.

Engaging DataOT for your programmatic SEO strategy

Rather than using restrictive mass page builders or relying on your internal team, you can engage a third-party platform like DataOT to scale your efforts.

We start by developing your Customer Acquisition Strategy, identifying the categories and non-branded search gaps you want to target.

We conduct keyword research to identify thousands of search terms for your OT-Pages / Smart Pages.

Once approved, we build the pages, get your final sign-off, and launch them. From there, we continually monitor, test, and optimise the pages to maximise performance.

Want to know how to launch a programmatic SEO strategy that ranks thousands of your pages on the first page of Google? Book a custom 1:1 session with our team today.