Programmatic SEO Case Studies & Examples

Firstly, what is programmatic SEO?

“The strategy of publishing unique, high-quality pages at scale using a template and a database”

Let's break down how this works.

Keywords often have patterns:

• ‍"Company vs company"
• "Best places to stay in X city"
• "X + X integration"
• "Definition of X"

To efficiently tackle these keywords, again and again, you can build a template.

You don't need to reinvent the wheel every time.

Some pages or article type can follow a formula.

Programmatic Page Template Example

TripAdvisor has one page for almost every city.

Each of those pages follows this formula:

Instead of filling out this template manually every time...

TripAdvisor pulls the data from a HUGE database of:

• Reviews
• Pub listings
• Hotel listings
• Fun "to do" lists

And it auto-populates the template for cities across the world.

Genius, right?

Here are 5 more examples of companies doing the same. 👇

1. Zapier

Zapier's database of +5,000 tools  is automatically turned into 50,000 unique integration landing pages.

2. NomadList

Each city on NomadList follows the same template. Data on each city auto-generates unique pages about the city.

3. Semrush

Semrush has 28,000 web pages that are automatic pulls from their website search statistics into a templated landing page.

4. AirBnb

Their "Holiday Rentals in X" keyword template pulls from their vast database of places to stay.

5. UserPilot

UserPilot built a database of tools in their industry and generated a variety of articles.

Let's look at how you can do the same.

How to Do Programmatic SEO Yourself (Using Userpilot as an Example)

In our SEO case study with UserPilot, we deep dived their programmatic processes.

It works a little like this:

Let's imagine you have   20 competitors across all your different use cases.

For each one, you write a detailed review with pros/cons, user reviews, and a few screenshots.

This is your database.

Now you build templates for these keywords:

• Best tools for "X" use case
• Free tools for "X" use case
• "Y" product alternative
• "Y" product vs "Z" product

For just three tools you have this many articles:

• 10 best tools for user onboarding
• 10 best tools for product tours
• Free “10 best tools for user onboarding”
• Free “10 best tools for product tours”
• UserPilot Alternatives
• Pendo Alternatives
• Whatfix Alternatives
• UserPilot vs Pendo
• Userpilot vs Whatfix
• Pendo vs Whatfix
• Best Userpilot competitors
• Best Pendo competitors
• Best Whatfix competitors

10 tools, with just two use cases in common = 45 articles.

20 tools + 3 use cases? 🤯

Using just a spreadsheet you can auto-create

90% of each article.

Intro, conclusion, tools descriptions. Then add any extras you want.

(Real example of a UserPilot content brief included in the case study)

See it in action

That's it.

Programmatic SEO helps you reuse content intelligently across your site to scale SEO.

Warning: ALL your content is impacted by how much time and effort you put into creating your database. Put it in the hard work up front.

Deep dive this strategy by downloading the full case study.

Where you'll find Excel sheets and templates for inspiration.

And an interview with UserPilot's Head of Marketing, Emilia Korczynska.