7 Steps To Grow On A Budget With Programmatic SEO

Doing business today is not an easy job. The competition is huge in every single industry, and if you are thinking about a new idea right now, it has probably got a competitor somewhere out there. So, how do you stay afloat in this extremely competitive world and, more importantly, be on top?

Let's discuss programmatic SEO, a neglected but winning strategy for a long time. Before diving into the growth opportunities with programmatic SEO, let’s briefly define what programmatic SEO is.

Programmatic SEO is a strategy that enables the automatic generation of SEO-optimized pages at scale, targeting long-tail keywords and covering user search intent, and therefore ranking high on SERP. With programmatic SEO, it is possible to grab hot leads and offer your product at the very moment when they are searching for your competitors.

It is essential to understand that programmatic SEO is not SEO, but programmatic SEO is nothing without SEO. Sounds confusing, but picture this: you are creating hundreds of low-quality pages hoping to get traffic. Programmatic SEO doesn’t work that way.

While heavily relying on automation, auto-generated pages still need to be aligned with SEO best practices. So today, we will focus on two major topics: doing SEO and getting empowered with programmatic SEO.

Step 1: Setting clear objectives

The first step to successful programmatic SEO (and any project in general) is to set clear objectives. What do you want to achieve with your campaign? Do you want to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, or generate more leads and sales?

When you know where you want to be, you will clearly see the way to get there. Once you have defined your specific goals, you can align them with your overall business outcomes. This will help you later measure SEO campaign success and make necessary adjustments.

Defining specific SEO goals

When setting SEO goals, it is essential to be as specific as possible. For example, instead of saying, “Improving website's ranking," you could say, “To rank in the top 10 for the keyword 'best SEO tools.'" Specific goals are measurable, too.

This means that you should be able to track your progress and measure the success of your campaign.

Aligning objectives with business outcomes

Once you have defined project goals, it is essential to align them with your overall business outcomes. For example, if your business goal is to increase sales, you could set a programmatic SEO goal of increasing organic traffic to your product pages.

Or, if your business goal is to generate more leads, you could set an SEO goal of increasing the number of visitors signing up for your newsletter.

Measuring success metrics

With SEO goals and business outcomes, you can choose the right metrics to track your success. Some critical SEO metrics to track include:

• Organic traffic
• Keyword rankings
• Domain authority
• Conversion rates

The first step of the project on growing on a budget with programmatic SEO can have the following look. 

• Business goal: Increase sales of the company's new product.
• SEO goal: Increase organic traffic to the product page.
• Success metrics: Track organic traffic to the product page and the number of sales.

Step 2: Keyword research and analysis

Why is keyword research fundamental for your digital presence? This question may be rhetorical because it is more than obvious: no keywords, no users searching for you. Keywords are more than crucial in a programmatic SEO campaign.

They are the backbone of the campaign and the data to build the whole content. 

• It helps you understand your target audience.
• It helps you identify opportunities to rank in search engines.
• It helps you track the success of your SEO campaign.

Tools and techniques for budget-friendly keyword research

Today, SEO specialists can power up their keyword research with multiple tools and platforms. Most platforms offer a 7 to 14-day trial period to use the tools for free. This period is enough to conduct keyword research on a budget. 

• Use free keyword research tools: Some popular keyword research tools include Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Moz Keyword Explorer, Ahrefs Free SEO Tools, etc. Those tools give an in-depth overview of keywords, provide competitor keyword lists, and help you create long-tail keywords for programmatic SEO campaigns. 
• Analyze your competitors: Look at the keywords your competitors are ranking for. Once you have identified the keywords your competitors are ranking for, you can try to target those keywords yourself.
• Use long-tail keywords: Long-tail keywords are more specific than short-tail keywords and are typically less competitive. Moreover, long-tail keywords enable scalability for programmatic SEO. For example, instead of targeting the keyword "shoes," you could target the keyword "women's running shoes in size 7," grabbing the attention of potential customers.

Identifying low-competition high-value keywords

When choosing keywords to target, it is crucial to consider both competition and value. Low-competition keywords are easier to rank for, and they turn out to be more valuable, attracting hot leads ready to convert.

Step 3: Content optimization

With the third step (and having keywords ready to be used), the project steps into its most time-consuming stage of content creation. Modern AI content generation tools significantly accelerate content creation, but human interaction is still priceless to having quality content.

If the keywords are the backbone of the programmatic SEO campaign, content is the heart and blood, getting all the credit for the project’s success, so content should be high quality and tailored to the user’s search intent. 

Here are a few tips for creating high-quality, relevant content:

• Do your research: Find the pains and needs of users, what they are looking for, and how you can solve their needs with your content. This will help you create accurate and informative content.
• Write for your audience: While algorithms generate programmatic SEO content automatically, they should maintain informativeness and avoid spammy elements.
• Use clear and concise language: Choose the language familiar to your audience.
• Structure your content: Use headings, subheadings, and bullet points to structure your content and make it easy to read.

On-page SEO best practices

Programmatic SEO adheres to SEO best practices, optimizing pages from content to performance.

• Use your target keywords throughout your content: Add keywords to page titles, meta descriptions, headings, subheadings, and throughout your content. However, avoid keyword stuffing, which is the excessive use of keywords in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings.
• Optimize your images: Optimize your images by using relevant file names and alt text. 
• Create a user-friendly website: Make sure your website is easy to navigate and mobile-friendly.
• Be consistent: The content structure, tone of voice, style of visuals, and overall content structure should be consistent. 

Step 4: Technical SEO

To ensure the success of programmatically generated pages, they should be technically flawless. Carry out technical SEO best practices by optimizing your website's technical aspects to make it easier for search engines to crawl and index.

This includes factors such as website speed, mobile-friendliness, and structured data. Understanding the technical aspects of SEO:

• Website speed: It is one of the most fundamental factors in technical SEO. A slow website can frustrate users and lead to a higher bounce rate. Search engines also prefer fast websites, so take care of website optimization to provide speed. 
• Mobile optimization: Make sure your website is mobile-friendly so users can have a good experience on all devices.
• Structured data: Take care of structured data to provide search engines with additional information about your content. 

Keep tracking performance by carrying out regular SEO audits so as not to lose critical information. 

Cost-effective ways to optimize website speed and performance

Take care of the website’s speed and performance optimization with available cost-effective techniques.

• Measure current performance: Test website performance with free performance measurement tools like Google Lighthouse. 
• Optimize your images: Images can often be the biggest culprit in terms of slowing down your website. Make sure to optimize your images by compressing them and using the right file format.
• Use a content delivery network (CDN): A CDN can help you improve your website's speed and performance by serving your static content, such as images and CSS files, from servers located closer to your visitors.
• Use a caching plugin: A caching plugin can help you improve your website's speed by storing static copies of your pages and serving them to users instead of having to generate them dynamically each time a page is loaded.

Step 5: Link-building strategies

To empower your programmatic SEO campaign with SEO best practices, think of incorporating link-building strategies as well. 

The role of backlinks in SEO

• Signal to search engines that your website is authoritative and trustworthy.
• Help to improve your website ranking in SERPs.
• Drive traffic to your website.

Low-cost and creative link-building tactics

Modern link-building strategies focus on users, bringing value through creating quality content and linking it to equally valuable and reliable sources. Here are more low-cost and creative link-building tactics that you can use. 

• Create high-quality, linkable content: This could include blog posts, infographics, videos, or other types of content.
• Guest blog for other websites: Guest blogging is a great way to get your content published on other websites and earn backlinks.
• Reach out to influencers: Partner with industry influencers to promote your content and engage new audiences. 
• Create broken link-building opportunities: Find websites with broken links and reach out to the website owners to offer to replace the link with your website.

Consider including link-building metrics in your overall SEO strategy monitoring and reporting. 

Step 6: Monitoring and analytics

After all the strategies and tools implemented to create and run a programmatic SEO project, it is critical to not lose pace and continue working on the project by tracking the first results. This is where monitoring and analytics come in.

Setting up tracking and monitoring tools:

Programmatically generated pages are now live, and as it is practically impossible to monitor every one of them one by one, it is wise to implement tracking and monitoring tools to track your SEO performance, including; 

• Organic traffic
• Keyword rankings
• Domain authority
• Conversion rates

Once you have collected data on your SEO performance, you need to interpret it and identify areas where you can improve. Based on the information, you can further proceed with adjusting strategies, deleting parts of the generated pages if needed, and focusing on better-performing ones. 

Step 7: Continuous learning and adaptation

The digital environment continuously changes as new technologies develop. Search engines are also constantly updating their algorithms and ranking factors. SEO professionals must continuously learn and adapt to stay ahead of the curve. To keep SEO strategies up-to-date and effective, follow these steps:

• Analyze your website's traffic to identify any areas where the algorithm change has impacted your rankings.
• Review your website's content to make sure it is up-to-date and relevant to the audience's current needs. 
• Optimize your website for new ranking factors introduced by the algorithm change.
• Experiment with new strategies to discover more effective techniques.
• Track your results to see what is working and what is not.

Case studies and examples

If you still wonder whether it is worth implementing programmatic SEO, check out the examples of businesses that have achieved success on a budget with programmatic SEO:

• Zapier: The popular automation platform that allows users to connect different apps and services uses programmatic SEO to create pages for all possible integrations between the apps and services it supports.

  Programmatically generated pages helped Zapier attract over 5.8 million monthly visitors, with more than half originating from searches. Zapier has also achieved $35 million in ARR and has over 500,000 pages indexed in Google.

• Tripadvisor: The top travel website that allows users to book flights, hotels, and tours, uses programmatic SEO to create pages for attractions, restaurants, hotels, and more in different locations.

  Some of their popular long-tail keywords, like things to do in {city} and the best hotels in {location}, helped Tripadvisor attract over 74 million monthly visitors and generate over 206.7 million monthly organic traffic. Tripadvisor also ranks for more than 21 million keywords.

• HubSpot: A CRM and marketing software company that uses programmatic SEO to create pages for different marketing topics and software integrations. Programmatic SEO helped HubSpot rank for over 19,000 keywords monthly, nearly 50% of which are commercial and transactional. HubSpot generates up to 40,000 high-intent leads monthly through programmatic SEO.

What should you know about programmatic SEO?

• Programmatic SEO can be a very effective way to generate leads and traffic for businesses of all sizes.
• Utilize programmatic SEO to generate pages for various topics, such as product pages, blog posts, landing pages, and more.
• Utilize programmatic SEO to target a broad spectrum of keywords, including long-tail and commercial ones.

Conclusion 

Programmatic SEO is not a one-stop solution for all your business needs and is definitely not a magic wand to achieve success. Still, it is a strategy that will power up your presence and give you a competitive advantage.  

How to achieve success with programmatic SEO on a budget:

• Start by identifying your target keywords.
• Use a programmatic SEO tool to create pages for your target keywords.
• Optimize your pages for search engines.
• Track your results and make adjustments as needed. 

Programmatic SEO means

• Scalability: Scale up page creation and optimization with programmatic SEO.
• Efficiency: Programmatic SEO can automate many of the tasks involved in SEO, including keyword research, content creation, and link building. 
• Precision: Target specific keywords and audiences precisely with programmatic SEO.

If you want to learn more about programmatic SEO, talk to a programmatic SEO expert to learn more about how it can help you achieve your growth goals.