Programmatic SEO and Regular SEO: How to use them together.

I started learning digital marketing in 2013 and I am still learning it.

In my 10 years of learning and executing my learnings, I have always felt a gap- a reliable source for continuous learning.

Learning is not a one-time process, as it is popularly said:

‘The more I learn the more I realize how much I don't know’.

I have always believed in this philosophy.

However, because I have been fortunate to launch or scale some of the top brands on digital in the country like-

Times Internet brands or

Future group brands or

working closely with the TATA group brands and many startups, one thing always pushed me to think harder- How can I pass my experiences back to someone who may need them?

How can I communicate the story of solving complex business problems to someone who may need to learn this?

How do I communicate the importance of 3 steps while you are working for a business- gathering facts, structuring solutions, building hypotheses?

How do I tell you, that beating a top fashion player like Myntra in SEO is not a one-time effort or is not a one-off?

What does it take to connect business outcomes to digital marketing?

and so on..

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• I will not make content on just one platform

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Because I have worked with some of the top resources in this field, that’s not how people who reach the top think.

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Now let’s get to the topic.

Regular SEO and Programmatic SEO: How to use them together.

Programmatic SEO is also referred to as pSEO.

pSEO is an effective strategy when you want to rank for various searches at scale.

You create hundreds or thousands of pages with the same layout but different and unique content.

Have you ever noticed how Tripadvisor ranks for almost all travel-related searches?

Look at this:

I search for the Best places to see in Bangalore- Tripadvisor is on top

I search for Best restaurants in Mumbai - Tripadvisor is on top

I search for Best hotels in Dubai- Tripadvisor is on the top

This is the power of pSEO.

Now if you further deep-dive.

The layout of one category of page remains the same.

Only the content inside it changes.

For example,

If I search for- the Best hotels in Dubai or I search for the Best hotels in Singapore.

Tripadvisor has the same page layout, however, the content inside the page will be as per the search, which is Dubai or Singapore.

Look at the below 2 screenshots for the Dubai and Singapore hotel pages.

This is an example of Programmatic SEO.

I hope the output of Programmatic SEO pages is clear.

Don’t worry I will tell you the tools that can help you do this at scale.

Programmatic SEO is great when you are looking to target many searches which have low volumes but are highly relevant to drive sales.

Another example;

When someone is searching for a Gynaecologist in Bandra Mumbai, the volume of this keyword may not be much but it is highly relevant to drive conversions as the intent of the user is high.

You will again find Practo doing the same for the above search, what Tripadvisor is doing for travel-related searches.

Hence, pSEO approach targets low-volume, high-intent, commercial-intent keywords.

When you do this exercise for your brand; break down the searches into ‘head terms‘ and ‘modifiers’.

Head terms are top-level categories of keywords you will aim for.

Your modifiers turn your head terms into long-tail keywords.

As per the above example;

‘Best hotel’ is the head term while ‘location‘ is the modifier.

Regular SEO is a process that is also done with the intent of increasing organic traffic but here, you target high volume, high keyword difficulty keywords.

For example;

‘Dubai holiday packages‘. Tripadvisor or any other travel portal will create a separate, well-optimised, detailed webpage targeting this keyword because if there is nothing unique on the page, Google will not read it as a people-first page and may therefore not rank it.

Tools to use for programmatic SEO:

Landing page builder- You can build a landing page with WordPress plugins like WP All Import or a website builder like Webflow.

The latter has free templates that make it easy for beginners to design their own site.

Webflow also has HTML embeds to insert your data into dynamic components.

Pick a database- Now you know where to build your template. But where do you store the information that makes up these components?

You can use a basic Excel spreadsheet.

Or, use a tool like Airtable which makes it easy to create tables to organize and manage your data.

Content writer- Remember, you do not have to stress about writing 100% unique content on every page. Since you are aiming for low volume, low keyword difficulty keywords, you can use a bit of AI to get this content in place. However, make sure strong human editing is done on this content. This is the core text-based SEO content that will complete your SEO page.

Design, data, and copy ready to go? Now, you need to combine everything.

Use a sync engine- A tool like Whalesync can help you move your data in Airtable to your Webflowt template. You just need to make sure the fields match in both tools.

Once they do, map them together. Whalesync will do the rest. The automation that happens in the background creates all your programmatic pages.

Hope this newsletter gives you more understanding on the role of Programmatic SEO and how it should be combined with Regular SEO for impactful results.

I will also be sharing a template that you can use to create a programmatic SEO plan for the Top Decoders community in the coming days.

That’s it for today, folks.

As you know, I am also conducting the Dream Performance Marketing Masterclass from 4th Jan’24 onwards.

Only 4 seats are left to be booked out of 10 for the batch.

The next batch is not in the pipeline right now. So make sure you grab a seat if you want to have a practical-based, LIVE learning experience.

I also hire one person from each batch to work with me full-time on an international project.

From the previous batch, I hired Vishal Singh

Everyone who takes up the course also gets a 30-minute 1:1 chat with me.

You can ask me anything about marketing, career guidance, interview preparation, your business problem- anything. You will have my full attention in this session.

I hope I see you on 4th Jan’24.

Cheers,

Apurv