Programmatic SEO

/digital-marketing-pro:programmatic-seo

Purpose

Plan and audit SEO pages generated at scale from structured data sources (databases, APIs, CSV/JSON files). Enforces quality gates to prevent thin content penalties, index bloat, and Google's Scaled Content Abuse policy.

Input Required

The user must provide (or will be prompted for):

• URL or data source: Existing programmatic pages to audit, or data source details for planning
• Page type: What kind of pages are being generated (location, product, integration, glossary, template, tool)
• Data source: CSV/JSON files, API endpoints, database queries — or existing pages to analyze
• Target scale: How many pages will be generated
• Current status: New build or auditing existing programmatic pages

Process

1. Load brand context: Read ~/.claude-marketing/brands/_active-brand.json for the active slug, then load ~/.claude-marketing/brands/{slug}/profile.json. Apply industry context and compliance rules. Check for brand guidelines at ~/.claude-marketing/brands/{slug}/guidelines/_manifest.json.
2. Data source assessment: Evaluate the data powering programmatic pages — row count, column uniqueness, missing values, duplicate detection (>80% field overlap), data freshness
3. Template engine planning: Design templates that produce genuinely unique pages — variable injection points, content blocks (static vs dynamic), conditional logic, supplementary content. Validate each page passes the "standalone value test"
4. URL pattern strategy: Design URL hierarchy — lowercase hyphenated slugs, logical structure, uniqueness enforcement, under 100 characters, consistent trailing slash
5. Internal linking automation: Hub/spoke model, related items (3-5 per page), breadcrumbs with BreadcrumbList schema, cross-linking by shared attributes, varied anchor text
6. Thin content safeguard check: Apply quality gates (see below)
7. Canonical strategy: Self-referencing canonicals, parameter handling, pagination strategy, manual page priority
8. Sitemap integration: Auto-generate entries, split at 50K URLs, <lastmod> from actual data timestamps, exclude noindexed pages
9. Index bloat prevention: Noindex low-value pages, pagination handling, faceted navigation canonicalization, crawl budget monitoring for 10K+ pages
10. Score and report: Score each dimension, produce prioritized action plan

Quality Gates

Scale Thresholds

Scaled Content Abuse Context (2025-2026)

Google's Scaled Content Abuse policy (introduced March 2024) saw major enforcement escalation:

• June 2025: Wave of manual actions targeting AI-generated content at scale
• August 2025: SpamBrain update enhanced pattern detection for AI-generated link schemes and content farms
• Result: 45% reduction in low-quality, unoriginal content in search results

Enhanced quality gates for programmatic pages:

• Content differentiation: 30-40%+ of content must be genuinely unique between any two programmatic pages (not just city/keyword string replacement)
• Human review: Minimum 5-10% sample review of generated pages before publishing
• Progressive rollout: Publish in batches of 50-100 pages. Monitor indexing and rankings for 2-4 weeks before expanding. Never publish 500+ simultaneously without quality review.
• Standalone value test: Each page should pass: "Would this page be worth publishing even if no other similar pages existed?"
• Site reputation abuse: Publishing programmatic content under a high-authority domain (not your own) may trigger site reputation abuse penalties (enforced aggressively since November 2024)

Safe vs Risky Programmatic Pages

Safe at scale:

• Integration pages (with real setup docs, API details, screenshots)
• Template/tool pages (with downloadable content, usage instructions)
• Glossary pages (200+ word definitions with examples, related terms)
• Product pages (unique specs, reviews, comparison data)
• Data-driven pages (unique statistics, charts, analysis per record)

Penalty risk at scale:

• Location pages with only city name swapped in identical text
• "Best [tool] for [industry]" without industry-specific value
• "[Competitor] alternative" without real comparison data
• AI-generated pages without human review and unique value-add
• Pages where >60% of content is shared template boilerplate

Uniqueness Calculation

Unique content % = (words unique to this page) / (total words on page) x 100

Measured against all other pages in the programmatic set. Shared headers, footers, and navigation excluded. Template boilerplate IS included.

URL Pattern Library

Common Patterns

• /tools/[tool-name]: Tool/product directory pages
• /[city]/[service]: Location + service pages
• /integrations/[platform]: Integration landing pages
• /glossary/[term]: Definition/reference pages
• /templates/[template-name]: Downloadable template pages
• /compare/[product-a]-vs-[product-b]: Comparison pages

URL Rules

• Lowercase, hyphenated slugs derived from data
• Logical hierarchy reflecting site architecture
• No duplicate slugs — enforce uniqueness at generation time
• Keep URLs under 100 characters
• No query parameters for primary content URLs
• Consistent trailing slash usage (match existing site pattern)

Output

A structured programmatic SEO assessment containing:

Programmatic SEO Score: XX/100

• Critical issues (fix immediately)
• High priority (fix within 1 week)
• Medium priority (fix within 1 month)
• Recommendations: data source improvements, template modifications, URL pattern adjustments, quality gate compliance actions
• Progressive rollout plan with batch sizes and monitoring checkpoints

Agents Used

• seo-specialist — Programmatic page analysis, quality gate enforcement, URL strategy, template evaluation
• content-creator — Template content design, uniqueness optimization

Scripts Used

• tech-seo-auditor.py — Check technical SEO issues across programmatic page samples
• content-scorer.py — Score content quality and uniqueness per template
• competitor-scraper.py — Analyze competitor programmatic page patterns