Programmatic SEO Best Practices: Crafting High-Quality Content

Create High Quality Content With programmatic SEO: Create Content that Mimics a Human Writer

It's a tricky situation to be in. Imagine generating 1,000 pages with programmatic SEO and having none of them rank on the first page after 6 months of publishing.

Isn’t programmatic SEO meant to help you create content that is easy to rank for?

So why aren’t you on the first page despite targeting “easy-to-rank-for” keywords?

Well, like any form of SEO, programmatic SEO also thrives on high-quality content and providing value. That value could be anything from:

• Sharing hacks and processes that help readers complete tasks that usually take hours in minutes
• Offering templates so they won’t have to do it themselves
• Providing actionable tips that yields result when implemented
• Unbiased review to help readers decide between 2 products

If your content can’t do any of the above, it will struggle to rank on the first page and also fall short of attracting leads or product sign-ups for your business.

So, how do you create high-quality programmatic SEO content that earns Google's check mark and also scores leads and traffic for your business?

That and many more are what you will learn in this guide.

Keep in mind that the tips we're sharing with you are from the school of hard knocks. And have implemented same on most of our pages currently ranking on the first page of Google

What's more interesting is that most of these pages have less than 1,000 words but average 2 minutes of page view time.

It shows that our readers aren’t just skimming through but are also waiting behind to read the content word-for-word.

Would that be possible if it wasn’t high-quality? We will leave you to answer that.

TL;DR

• High-quality, valuable content is key for SEO ranking.
• Programmatic SEO content should be human-like, not obviously auto-generated.
• Strategies to improve content include: using creative data, matching searcher's intent, targeting a specific audience, applying on-page optimization, and making the content easy to read.
• Tools like SEOmatic and SurferSEO can aid in content creation and optimization.
• Beyond the text, on-page SEO is crucial for search engines to understand and rank your page.

How Google Describes High-quality Content

There are a few ways people believe Google rates high-quality content.

Some website owners believe high-quality content follows E-E-A-T (Experience, expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness) guidelines.

Others believe it should drive social shares.

While none of these are wrong, they fail to offer a deep meaning to high-quality content.

For a deeper understanding, we had to go back to their helpful content guide, updated in December 2022.

Our theory from reading the guide is that high-quality programmatic SEO content ought to go beyond the text on your page.

And our theory is endorsed by Search advocate John Mueller who was quoted saying:

In one of Google’s webmaster office-hour hangout held in 2020.

So what makes a piece of content high-quality? Here are some components we believe it should comprise of:

• Well-structured content: Skimmable and scannable
• Human first, search engine second
• Crisp image
• High page speed
• Low bounce rate
• High page view time (industry average is 52 seconds according to Content Square)
• Earn lots of social shares and backlinks
• Original information, research, and analysis - it's crucial to avoid duplicate content issues.
• Shareability
• Readability: No Grammatical error, original text, proper heading, use of bullets, white spaces, and lots more
• Minimal on-page ads to limit interference with page content
• Optimized for mobile view

Unfortunately, because programmatic pages are auto-generated, it's impossible to fit all these components into your content.

No matter what you do, here’s one thing to always remember: Never create programmatic SEO content in a way that causes both your reader and search engine to "Notice" that it's auto-generated and not written by a real human.

We always want to offer them the human writer vibe.

And how do you do that?

Here are a couple of strategies that can help.

5 Ways to Create programmatic SEO Content that Mimics the Human Vibe

Get Creative with Data

When it comes to creating programmatic SEO content, we always recommend it sounds closer to something written by a human rather than an AI tool.

One way to do that is go beyond the basics by creating datasets with sentence-type phrases.

Sentence-type data are long-tail data that adds more depth to your content.

In our opinion, they sound like something a human will say, rather than what an Ai software can create.

It’s therefore a gateway to add a personal touch to programmatic SEO content.

For example, with one word data, you end up with sentences like this:

But with sentence-type phrases, here’s your output:

See the difference?

Good examples of sentence-type phrases include personal stories, expert quotes, questions, and industry statistics.

You can organize your data in a downloadable .csv file as we did below, then import it into the data library of your programmatic SEO software.

If you’re a first-timer on SEOmatic, here’s a quick walkthrough of how to import your datasets.

Step 1: On your SEOmatic dashboard, select “Add new project”

Step 2: On the next page, input project details, select where you want your content published (your CMS or ours), and click “Next”

Step 3: Once the content editor opens up, hover your mouse over "Data"

Step 4: Scroll below the page, and you will find a button that says "Add a dataset"Step 5: Upload your CSV file

Step 5: Upload your CSV file

Step 6: Your data will be sketched like in the image below. Click "Import" to transfer the content of the CSV file to your dataset.

If you do everything right, your data should appear on your dashboard in the form of placeholders that can be inserted anywhere in your content:

Since we've already shown you how to import your dataset on SEOmatic, why not try the product?

You can sign up for a 7-day free trial here.

Match Searcher's Intent

The first step in getting it right with your content is nailing the search intent of your reader.

Search intent is simply the reason behind the search. It could be informational, navigational, commercial, or even transactional.

Because most programmatic SEO pages focus on keywords with high buying intent, most of your selected keywords will likely fall under commercial intent, but that doesn't rule out informational keywords.

In our opinion, when you nail our search intent, you will be able to identify all the answers to the searcher’s query.

Example 1: weather.com

Excellent example of pages that nail the search intent of the readers is this weather forecast page from weather.com.

Notice how the structure of the page matches the search intent of the reader: information.

At a glance, you will observe the page giving information on the current weather of the city (in this case Paris).

And the next frame forecasts the weather for Paris in the afternoon, evening, and the next day.

This page could go an extra mile by adding a 14-days weather forecast for this particular city. This way, readers know what to expect and how to make appropriate changes to their schedule.

But they decided to create specific pages for weather forecasts, adding even more programmatic pages to the website.

Example 2: Kprofiles.com

And another is this profile page from Kprofiles.

For this page, the website once again nailed the search intent by using short texts that give quick answers.

Because K-pop fans are passionate about their stars, they want every single detail about them: Age, Birth date, Blood type, educational background, and musical journey.

They want to consume the information in a way that 's memorable and hard to forget.

The structure of the page above gives them that.

There’s no block of text, and neither is a blog-post type intro. They wasted no time getting to the details.

We believe observing those two pages will give you an idea of how to structure your programmatic SEO content for readability.

Also keep in mind that nailing search intent will also help you decide how much you will cover in the content.

For more in-depth examples of effective programmatic SEO strategies, check out these 3 programmatic SEO examples worth your attention.

Position your Content for a Small Crowd

Many programmatic SEO content fails to choose a unique angle for their content.

Some content writers say your angle is the USP of your content. Others believe it’s your positioning.

But we believe it's "how you win over other copy-cat content on SERPS."

Sometimes, choosing a position allows you to tailor your message to a small crowd.

Which makes it easier to create content that’s both relatable and pain-point driven.

Now, imagine your niche is “Solo-entrepreneurship”.

To differentiate your content from the others, you can choose to structure your content for any of this crowd:

• Working class who want to create a side hustle
• 9-5 workers who want to quit their job
• Beginners or college students
• Starting from scratch with no audience

Our theory is that if your content speaks to everyone, then it speaks to no one.

Don’t Forget On-page Optimization

To rank your content high on search engines, it doesn't need to be just high-quality; it needs to be optimized for showing up among search results, which includes faster indexing.

A part of optimization includes nailing search intent and creating human-first content (Both of which we’ve already thrashed out).

And the last part is implementing on-page SEO by weaving the following elements into your content to help it rank quickly:

• Add your main keywords in the URL slug, title tag, meta description, and Headers (H1, H2, and H3)
• Ensure your URL is short and descriptive.
• Include meta-description- In case Google can’t auto-generate one from reading your content, it will use the one you created
• Add internal links to pass link juice to inner pages ( Here’s a complete guide on linking building for programmatic SEO)
• Name your images well, and use descriptive alt texts so the search engine knows what's about.

One of our favorite tools for on-page optimization is SurferSEO. It does a good job at outlining keyword frequency, and placement.

It also has a content grading system that tells us how the quality of our content compares with those currently ranking on the #1 page of SERPs.

Make it Skimmable and Readable.

The last part of creating high-quality programmatic SEO content, or any content in particular, is to make it readable.

Our general rule for readability is to keep things simple and at a 6th-grade level.

• Use simple words: Say "use" instead of "utilize."
• Keep your paragraphs short: Ideally, between 1 - 3 sentences.
• Use large fonts
• Break blocks of text with white spaces
• Use bullet points for list items.

Fortunately, all these features are built into SEOmatic's Ai writer. Our content editor mimics that of Notion; hence, it's easier to create content that follows all the on-page tips listed above.

With a 14-day free trial, you can test the tool at zero cost before investing money.

Go here to sign up for a free trial Now!

Conclusion

When creating high-quality programmatic SEO, the text on your page isn't enough. Don't sleep on on-page SEO.

It's the only way for search engines to understand your page and rank it for the right phrase. And if you need a tool to help you create excellent programmatic SEO content, Seomatic is just by your corner.