Whether they know it or not, many ecommerce marketers are doing programmatic search engine optimization, one of the hottest SEO tactics in the age of artificial intelligence.
Marketers can leverage their existing knowledge of optimizing product and category pages to attract new visitors.
Programmatic SEO
You probably won’t find the term “programmatic SEO” in your dictionary. This process uses algorithms, automation, and sometimes AI to create keyword-specific web pages at scale.
The purpose of this technology Page Ranking A huge number of Long-tail keywordsdriving traffic and topic authority.
Programmatic SEO (pSEO) stores content in a database and displays it on your website using templates, similar to how e-commerce websites already work.
An online shop stores product information (product name, description, image, price, etc.) in a database. Each product detail page uses the same layout or template and loads content from that source.
Consider the Dick’s Sporting Goods website, which at the time of writing had 105 pairs of Nike men’s running shoes. These are all content pages in a pSEO context.
Each page shared the same template and targeted a unique long-tail keyword, such as “Nike Men’s Pegasus 41 Running Shoes” and “Nike Men’s Infinity RN 4 Running Shoes.”
All e-commerce platforms, content management systems, and blogging tools work in the same way, and the pSEO approach applies this concept to content generation and marketing.
pSEO for E-commerce
Imagine a new online store that sells shoes. This new shop has to compete with retail giants like Dick’s Sporting Goods and manufacturers like Nike, so it’s unlikely to rank highly for the keyword stem “running shoes.”
Instead, the new store is trying a content marketing approach. Finally I want to buy shoes.
Merchants can do this manually with a series of blog posts or automate it with pSEO.
Keyword phrase
The first step in the pSEO process is to identify stem keyword phrases to turn into long-tail ones. If the focus is on trail running, the new shoe retailer might choose a phrase such as “running trails in national parks.”
This phrase can be expanded with superlatives and places.
- “Best Running Trails in Michigan’s National Parks”
- “The longest national park running trail in Ohio.”
- “The Pacific Northwest’s toughest national park runs”
- “The steepest running trail in the national park near Calexico, California.”
Each long-tail phrase will eventually be transformed into a piece of content that will attract a few site visitors each.
Data Source
A page built around the keyword phrase “steepest national park running trails near Calexico, CA” won’t generate much traffic and isn’t worth the time it takes to create it manually.
But with pSEO, you can easily create content for hundreds or thousands of pages with low difficulty and low traffic.
The first step is the data source.
For example, the U.S. National Park Service maintains several databases on parks, trails, usage, public notices, and even native animal species.
Content Generation
Using data from the National Park Service, shoe stores can set up automated workflows.
This workflow may require a developer, but often involves using Zapier or If This Then That to pull data. Generative AI PlatformgenAI parses the data and adds content like page titles, short descriptions, park addresses, and tables of facts about national parks — but doesn’t necessarily add entire blog posts.
The key to pSEO is that content is automatically generated and passed onto your store’s website.
Templates
The store needs a page template that consistently displays useful running trail information for shoppers. This page includes best-selling trail running shoes, Email Subscription Form.
The template is similar to a product detail page.
Separate category templates can also be useful: for example, a page targeted to “Running Trails in Michigan’s National Parks” could have sections for the longest, steepest, flattest, busiest, and best running trails in each part of the state. Content Marketing Topic Clusters.
Implementing pSEO
The pSEO process is similar to what ecommerce marketers already do. Optimize Product detail pages and category pages. New features include workflow automation and data organization.
Each individual pSEO content page is unlikely to attract many visitors, but all your pSEO pages combined can attract a lot of visitors.
For example, in August 2024, content creator Adam Enfroy YouTube Video He demonstrated how he used this technique to rank for over 50,000 keyword phrases in Google. Many of the pages Enfroy created only received a few visits per month, but overall saw a significant increase in traffic.