How we got free links from Google and Oracle and at the same time increased traffic by 38%
What if I told you that there is a strategy for automation of SEO promotionwhich allows you to create hundreds of thousands of high-quality pages at minimal cost?
Welcome to programmatic SEO.
In this case study, you'll learn how our team helped a client increase organic traffic by 38%.
We achieved this by implementing an automated approach to SEO. Instead of hiring copywriters, we developed a template for landing pages, created 500 pages, and programmers did the rest of the work.
In addition, the site attracted backlinks from more than 700 domains, including such industry giants as Oracle and Google, while we did not actively invest in link building.
In this case study, you'll learn how to effectively use SEO automation to build sites with thousands of pages, even if you don't have a ton of experience in the field.
GETTING STARTED
Our client is the owner of a software company that offers a platform for securing and managing development processes using open source code.
The client was unable to understand which keywords were likely to generate revenue, which resulted in the loss of a significant number of profitable queries.
Optimizing one or two new pages did not solve the problem. That's why we developed a long-term strategy to cover tens of thousands of keywords by automating the page optimization process without the need for manual work.
AUTOMATIC SEO CONTENT CREATION
Traditional SEO methods aim to increase website visibility by creating quality content and relevant pages optimized for key queries. This approach is ideal when your content is well-developed and provides high value to users.
But what if there was an opportunity to scale this to a completely different level?
WHAT IS “PROGRAMMATIC SEO”?
Programmatic SEO, or pSEO, involves creating landing pages en masse through automation with the goal of promoting them in search results. Each page is created for a specific keyword using automated tools and databases, maintaining uniqueness.
You've probably already come across sites where pages were created using this principle.
Real estate websites, online stores, and content projects (as shown below) use this method extensively, creating thousands of pages of vendor data, including automatically generated titles, images, descriptions, and other elements.
An example of this approach is Realtor.com.
When searching for “homes for sale in [местоположение]» you will probably see pages similar to the following:
Los Angeles
New York
Please note that the structure of all these pages is the same, and only their content (real estate information) changes.
A quick Google search reveals that there are 19,495 cities, towns, and villages in the United States. Of course, Realtor.com cannot manually create a page for each location. Instead, they use software SEO to automate the process.
What is the difference between traditional SEO and software SEO?
While the goal of both approaches is to increase organic traffic, they achieve this in different ways.
Traditional SEO aims to gradually improve a website's ranking by focusing on creating unique, high-quality content that targets highly competitive keywords.
Programmatic SEO allows you to achieve the same results much faster by mass creating pages with the same structure using databases, templates and automation.
In most cases, if your template simply copies the page, changing only the keyword, this will lead to pessimism from Yandex and Google due to duplicate content or search engines will not index it at all.
However, if the template is used to create thousands of products with useful and accurate descriptions of each product, you are creating value for the user – which is what search engines want.
When it comes to local SEO, you have some leeway: you only need to change the name of the city and product for the page to be considered “unique enough.”
Examples of using programmatic SEO
Beyond real estate sites like Realtor.com, there are many examples of successful use of programmatic SEO to build pages.
Information sites
Sites like Nomad List use programmatic SEO to help users find the best places to live, work and travel. The site collects data on cost of living, internet speed and other important parameters around the world, creating easy-to-read landing pages.
Essentially, the site takes available data and structures it in such a way as to provide its audience with the most valuable information possible.
Catalogs and applications for workflow automation
Zapier, a workflow automation platform that connects thousands of different apps, programmatically creates landing pages for every tool it works with. These pages showcase personalized workflows that users can create to suit their needs.
In finance, Wise has developed a landing page template for each currency it operates, allowing clients to convert in just a few clicks.
Route planners for holidays and travel
TripAdvisor and Expedia, which help users plan their trips, use software SEO to dynamically generate destination guides and content tailored to specific itineraries.
For example, TripAdvisor groups hotels by location, so when you search for keywords such as “hotels in Japan” or “restaurants in London” you will find relevant pages:
Websites and job aggregators
Resume and job posting sites such as Indeed and Glassdoor actively use programmatic approaches to create job listings, company profiles, and other SEO-focused content.
The structure of pages with job listings remains unchanged. However, the content is generated by the users themselves, who upload their ads into the system to be displayed on the relevant pages.
These are just a few examples, but no matter your industry or site size, you can use SEO automation to create pages in huge quantities.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Programmatic SEO
Here are some of the benefits of pSEO:
Efficiency: Automating the process of creating similar pages improves productivity and allows you to quickly publish content.
Data analysis: Uses data to provide users with useful information that is easy to automate.
Scalability: Simplifies the process of scaling your content creation efforts and allows you to target a wide range of keywords at once.
Time saving: Frees up time for strategic planning and more complex SEO tasks.
Focus on low competition keywords: Makes it easier to rank for less competitive keywords, which helps increase search engine visibility faster.
Attracting backlinks: As you create many pages, the likelihood of receiving natural backlinks to your site increases.
Long-term budget savings: The initial investment in tools and technologies (for example, designers or no-code) can be significant, but compared to manual writing and layout of pages, this approach is significantly cheaper.
However, before you start implementing SEO automation, it is important to consider some disadvantages:
Lack of personalization: Automation may not take into account the need for a customized approach to certain aspects of SEO, which can negatively impact the user experience. You need to make sure that your pages offer unique value to each visitor.
High programming skill: Implementing pSEO requires programming skills to create feature-rich page templates, work with APIs, and integrate various data sources with your CMS. If you have no experience in programming, you can contact developers on freelance exchanges (fiver, kwork, etc.)
Risks of dependence on automation: Heavy reliance on automation can lead to a lack of human oversight and, as a result, subtle nuances or issues in SEO are missed.
Dependency on data quality: The effectiveness of the generated content directly depends on the input data; any errors may negatively affect the results.
Despite these disadvantages, even if you don't have a large website, you can still integrate programmatic SEO into your strategy.
How to Generate Content Using Programmatic SEO
To generate a truly massive number of articles, you need data that will span hundreds, if not thousands, of pages.
We'll start by finding keywords that you can base all your content around.
Keyword Search
For SEO automation to be successful, it is important to target hundreds or thousands of similar keywords using a single page template. To do this, you need to identify relevant keywords with a high volume of long-tail queries.
One way to do this is to enter a seed keyword related to your site into Ahrefs' Keyword Explorer tool.
For example, if you have a website about veganism, you might use queries like “vegan restaurants.”
Then go to the “Relevant Terms” section, which provides an expanded list of possible keywords related to your query.
Advice: It's a good idea to refine your search results by setting your keyword difficulty to less than 20 and your Domain Rank (DR) for the highest ranking sites to below 30. This filter will help you find keywords that are easier to rank for, even with few backlinks.
Identify patterns in keywords to find out which ones are suitable for automatic page generation.
In this case, many keywords are associated with a specific location and include the term “best,” such as “best vegan restaurants in Chicago.”
To do this, sort your keywords by “Terms” rather than by “Parent Topics”.
We parsed 176 keywords and now you can create 176 pages.
Defining Modifiers
In the example above, key queries can be divided into two categories: basic terms and modifiers.
Basic term is the top-level keyword category you're aiming for, such as “best vegan restaurants.”
Modifier is an additive that converts the base term into long-tail keywords (search queries with low search volume), such as “in Chicago.”
A good example…
For a tourism portal, you can use the following combination of the main term and modifier: “things to do” + “in [местоположении]”, for example: “What to do in Moscow?”
You can also narrow your query even further by adding an additional modifier: “things to do” + “in [местоположении]” + ” for [целевой аудитории]”
For example: “What to do in Moscow for tourists”
Once you've done all of the above, you'll have an extensive list of keywords and you can start generating content.
Determine search intent
The next step is to figure out the type of content that will be useful to users searching for these keywords – that is, determining search intent.
Study the results for your keywords to understand what content you should add to your pages.
For example, here is the top result for the keyword “best vegan restaurants in Chicago.”
As you can see in the screenshot above, there is useful information about the various vegan restaurants in the state, including:
Restaurant name
Location
Phone number
Website address
In addition, there is a brief description of each restaurant. Analyzing the competing pages that rank at the top will help you understand what information you need to provide to satisfy user intent for the selected keyword.
In this case, users want to know more about the restaurant itself, its location (to understand whether it is close to them) and contact information (so that they can book a table).
Find relevant data
Once you determine what information users are looking for, you need to choose the right data source.
As you can see in the screenshot above, there is useful information about the various vegan restaurants in the state, including:
Restaurant name
Location
Phone number
Website address
In addition, there is a brief description of each restaurant. Analyzing the competing pages that rank at the top will help you understand what information you need to provide to satisfy user intent for the selected keyword.
In this case, users want to know more about the restaurant itself, its location (to understand whether it is close to them) and contact information (so that they can book a table).
Find relevant data
Once you determine what information users are looking for, you need to choose the right data source.
Kaggle – This data on the Kaggle platform is most often used to train artificial intelligence and machine learning models, but it can also be used to populate pages.
As with Google Dataset Search, you can find relevant databases by searching using keywords. For example, you could enter “life expectancy.” Pay attention to the number of downloads to assess the popularity and, therefore, the reliability of the selected data.
You can also sort the results by date added to find the most recent databases that most likely have not yet been integrated into their pages by other companies.
Collections of government data. You can find free data collections on government. sites such as data.gov (USA) and ons.gov.uk (UK). These resources offer hundreds of thousands of free datasets covering a variety of industries and topics.
Now you are ready to start generating content using automated SEO.
Create a template for your pages
Once you have a list of keywords and data sources identified, the next step is to create a template for your landing pages.
For the purposes of this article and to illustrate the process of implementing software content, we will look at a simple example keyword: “lifespan” + “in [стране]”, using a database created in Google Sheets.
However, to create truly professional and useful pages, it is recommended to seek help from programmers.
Here is a link to a sample template we will use:
To create a list of keywords, I asked the AI to list all the countries in the world and add them to “life expectancy”, for example, “US life expectancy”, “Greek life expectancy” and so on.
These keywords were loaded into Ahrefs' Keyword Explorer.
Export your keywords from Ahrefs and paste them into the Keyword Data tab of your template. Remove all columns except the following:
Keyword – the keyword by which you are promoting
Complexity — the level of competition for this key request.
Request volume/frequency — the number of requests for your GEO (for example, USA, Russia).
Request rate — total volume of search queries for a keyword per month
Traffic potential – the total amount of organic traffic that a landing page can attract by being in the first position in Google search results.
The second tab of your table is where you store all the necessary information from your dataset. This example provides basic statistics on life expectancy in different countries.
On the third tab, you can combine all the information and create content for your page.
In more complex cases, you can use an API to integrate data into your content, but we've developed a simple formula in Google Sheets that pulls the data you need from the Keyword and Lifetime Data tabs onto one page.
Here is the formula itself:
This is what the text will look like after filling it with data:
India — life expectancy 68.3 years, population 1,395,398,000 people.
Additional information about India:
Adult mortality (probability of death between the ages of 15 and 60 per 1000 people) is 181.
In 2015, there were 1,100 deaths reported among children under 5 years of age, of which 910 occurred in infancy.
Average body mass index (BMI) in India is 18.7.
India GDP is 1613.19 billion dollars.
Next, we will show you how to get such a result and upload it to your website.
If Google Sheets formulas don't work for you, here's a query for ChatGPT to help you create content:
Here's the formula from ChatGPT (which we've updated slightly to format the text correctly and to ensure it pulls data from the correct tab, i.e. the Lifespan Data tab):
Please note that the generated content presented here does not have enough value to rank effectively in Yandex or Google. However, with the help of a programmer, you can create a much more attractive template and page layout, allowing you to offer truly useful information to your audience.
In our life expectancy example, you can implement unique graphs, tables, and charts based on the data collected to help users better understand life expectancy in different countries.
Adding additional unique data or information about each country, such as the cost of living or explaining the factors that influence high or low life expectancy, will make the content more informative and engaging.
This example demonstrates the power of programmatic SEO, allowing you to create content at scale. It can be a starting point for further improving your page by adding unique content or useful visualizations that display your data.
Additionally, you can take advantage of existing page templates, such as those on Expedia and TripAdvisor, that integrate user-generated content (through reviews, ratings, and comments) to add value to the information on your pages.
Adding additional elements can significantly improve the quality of your pages and increase their chances of ranking high in search results.
Metadata optimization
It's important to remember that this method of content creation involves producing hundreds or even thousands of pages in a short period. The main goal is to ensure scalability.
When developing a large amount of content, you also need to pay attention to creating attractive and SEO-optimized metadata for each page. This is important in order to improve the visibility and attractiveness of pages in search results.
Metadata generation
The Page Builder features handy formula columns that automatically create URLs, titles, H1 tags, and descriptions for each page. This simplifies the optimization process when working with large volumes of pages.
URL Optimization
The URL should be clear and informative for users. This means that it should be concise, logical and accurately describe the content of the page so that both users and search engines can easily understand what will be presented on the page.
The above formula automatically converts the desired page keyword, separating its parts with hyphens to create a convenient and understandable URL.
Title
The title meta tag plays a key role in SEO optimization. It should not only be attractive to users, but also accurately reflect the content of the page. It is also important that the title includes the target keyword for which you are aiming to rank high in search engines.
The formula used takes the main keyword of the page, converts it into a capitalized format, and then adds the site name, which helps improve recognition and compliance with SEO standards.
H1 tag
The H1 tag, like the meta title tag, should be as attractive as possible to users and accurately describe the content of the page.
It's the first element a visitor will see, so it's important that it clearly conveys the main theme of the page and helps users quickly understand what they can find on the site.
The H1 tag should also include keywords to support SEO optimization and improve the page's visibility in search engines.
The description should clearly reflect the content of the page and contain calls to action that motivate users to click on your link.
It should not only be informative, but also encourage action, attracting attention and highlighting your page among competitors in search results.
Once you've completed creating the content for your pages, the final step is publishing it on your site.
This step is extremely important, since the published content must not only be of high quality, but also properly structured in order to improve the user experience and SEO indicators of the site.
The content publishing process will depend on what content management system (CMS) you use for your site. Below are a few tools to help make this process easier.
Tools for publishing content:
WP All Import is a powerful plugin for importing and exporting content to sites running on WordPress and WooCommerce.
Zapier — a tool for automating processes. You can set up Zapier integration if your site is powered by Webflow.
Softr is an ideal solution for those who want to create and manage a website directly through Google Sheets.
Publishing with WP All Import
After installing the WP All Import plugin, you will be able to:
“Upload a file”,
“Download a file”,
or “Use existing file”.
To begin the process, click Upload File, then select the dataset you want. Once downloaded, select the “Import data from this file into new items” option and create new “Posts” for each entry in your data file. This allows you to quickly and efficiently publish content to your site, especially if you are working with a large number of pages.
The next step is to make sure that the data is correctly imported to the site. Review each page or post to ensure that the content is displayed correctly, all metadata is in place, and the page structure is as expected.
This is important in order to avoid mistakes and ensure high-quality content display, which will have a positive impact on both user experience and SEO.
After successfully importing the data, you can begin creating the page template. To do this, you need to copy an existing template and fill in the required custom fields using the data from the downloaded file.
Template customization example
To automatically substitute the country name into the page, use a template variable, for example, {country[1]}. This will allow you to dynamically display relevant data on every page, ensuring unique and relevant content, which is especially important for improving SEO and user experience.
After creating the page, the plugin will ask you to enter a unique identifier. To make this process easier, click the “Auto-detect” button and the field will be automatically filled in with the page name. This ensures that the ID matches the title and helps improve URL structure and SEO optimization.
The final step is to confirm and initiate the data import process.
By going to Posts, you can verify that your pages have been created and automatically published.
Here's an example of what one of the pages might look like:
Once your pages are live, it's important to regularly monitor their progress and make changes based on their performance.
Page optimization
As mentioned, the example presented is just a simple example of what can be achieved using SEO automation. With the help of a programmer, you can significantly improve the appearance of your pages and increase their value to users.
Content indexing
Given the volume of content published, it is not surprising that search engine crawlers may have difficulty indexing each page quickly. However, there are techniques that can help with this process, such as using internal links and creating XML sitemaps.
Internal links
Internal links play a particularly important role in context of automated SEOespecially when you publish a large number of pages at the same time. This is necessary to help search crawlers find and index all your content.
One effective way to implement internal linking is to place links on top-level pages of the directory that link to program pages.
For example, in the context of the topic of life expectancy, you might organize pages by continent to give you a structure, like this:
A page dedicated to the Asian region should contain internal links to pages from all countries of this continent.
The importance of internal linking
If you don't take care of good internal linking, you risk creating a lot of unindexed pages that may be considered irrelevant and useless.
If your site is running on WordPress, you can use the Internal Link Juicer plugin to automatically generate internal links in your content.
XML site files
XML sitemaps are files that provide search engines with a structured list of your portal's URLs. They help improve SEO by providing efficient indexing, making it easier for search engines to find content and prioritize important pages.
This helps increase visibility and improve rankings in search results, and improves the overall effectiveness of search engine optimization.
Creating sitemaps
Create a separate sitemap for each directory level you create. This will allow you to structure your sitemap by topic and simplify the process of scanning the entire site.
This categorized creation of sitemaps will also make it easier to update if you need to add new pages or remove existing ones.
Example URLs
For example, you can imagine the Asian region URLs in the context of our life expectancy topic:
This is what the XML sitemap for the Asia region will look like in your page series. Its name will be site.com/asia-life-expectancy-sitemap.xml
This will allow Googlebot to crawl and index your pages faster, which will make them appear in search results faster.
Results
The use of programmatic SEO has yielded significant results. Over the past year, having created nearly 500 pages for our client, we have seen impressive growth in organic traffic.
Organic traffic increased by 37.9%With 173.5 thousand to 239.3 thousand sessions.
Over the past twelve months, the number of keywords for which the site ranked in Google's top 10 results has grown from zero to 1,923.
Without implementing a backlink strategy, the site managed to attract over 700 referring domains.
These include backlinks from major sites, Microsoft, Oracle, Google and the like.
Conclusions
In this case study, I described how you can get backlinks and increase organic traffic without paying, using an automated approach to content creation.
From this article you learned:
How to search for scalable keywords to create pages automatically.
How to select appropriate data sets for content integration and improvement.
How to Make Landing Page Templates Using Google Sheets and Artificial Intelligence.
How to optimize metadata (title, URL, H1, description) at any scale.
How to mass publish content with minimal effort.
Using this strategy will allow you to increase visibility across hundreds of keywords while scaling your content. This will lead to increased organic traffic and strengthen your link profile by generating backlinks organically.
If you need help with SEO promotioncontact our SEO Enterprise team!
