We know programmatic SEO (pSEO) can sometimes seem like a mystical, mysterious process that only SEO gurus have a grip on. Can we let you in on a little secret? You don’t have to dedicate your life to SEO, or even know how to code, to run a successful programmatic SEO project—you may just need some guidance.
pSEO helps you produce unique content at scale in a short period of time, using a database, pre-defined templates, and automations. One of the biggest benefits is that it helps you publish content fast: For example, publishing 17,000 pages in just four months and boosting demo requests by 72% in that time—a feat that would take 17 years if done manually.
Sure, that all sounds nice, but just publishing a bunch of content for the sake of publishing content isn’t going to get you those conversion results—you need a content strategy that works for your brand, product, and audience.
Here, we give you four common pSEO use cases for B2B SaaS, along with real-life programmatic SEO examples, to help you understand how you can design the best strategy for your business. We also spoke with our Head of SEO Usman Akram and strategist Terry Stancheva to get their expert tips on each of these use cases.
TL;DR
- pSEO lets you create content at scale, helping you reach a bigger audience with less time and money
- Popular pSEO use cases for B2B SaaS include local SEO, integrations pages, product-driven content, and competitor-focused content
- None of these pSEO use cases is a one-size-fits-all approach, so you need to first understand what type of content your buyers want before building out your strategy
- Even if you target keywords with low search volume, understanding your audience and what they want can help you bring in lots of traffic to your pSEO pages
- In addition to helping you drive more traffic and conversions, programmatic SEO pages can give you helpful insights into who your audience is and why your product is valuable to them
Use case: Local SEO
Even though we conduct so much business online, some people still prefer to hire services that are available in their city or region, maybe because they want to::
- Work with someone they can meet in person, whether that’s a software development company or an SEO agency like Flying Cat.
- Make sure whoever they hire will have cultural familiarity with their audience and customers.
- Be located in the same country or the same time zone as whoever they’re hiring.
Thankfully, pSEO gives you a way to quickly generate large numbers of landing pages for location-specific services. For example, if Flying Cat wanted to reach more clients in North America, we could create hundreds of localized landing pages with the variable being location, like SEO agency in New York, SEO agency in Toronto, SEO agency in Mexico City, etc.
Real example: Creating localized landing pages for a software development company
While local SEO is generally a very popular pSEO use case, we don’t see it all the time with B2B SaaS brands, and it makes sense—when someone is buying software for their company, they don’t tend to care too much about where it comes from geographically.
However, this use case is a good fit for companies that provide services, say software development, bringing us to our first example. One of our clients is a company that provides services like software and web app development.
This client wants to start tapping into more UK markets, a perfect opportunity for programmatic pages to optimize local SEO results. So we’re creating landing page templates, such as “bespoke software development in [citycounty]” and “web app development in [citycounty]”.
What’s the result? We’re able to generate hundreds of unique landing pages specifically targeted towards local audiences, helping our client reach a broader audience in a far shorter time than if they were to generate these pages manually.
The database for our client’s local SEO pSEO project includes hundreds of cities and counties, allowing them to reach a way bigger audience than if they generated this content manually.
Expert tip: This use case can even give you insights into which geographical areas are the most relevant for you. That way, you can allocate more resources there and increase your chances of conversions.
Use case: Integration pages
Ever heard of Zapier? Ok, sorry, dumb question. Familiar with Zapier’s integrations? Probably not all of them, seeing there are literally thousands. You think the popular automation tool creates all those integration pages manually? I think you know what we’re getting at here.
Integration pages is a huge use case for pSEO, as this approach allows you to automate the creation of dedicated landing pages that inform your users about which tools they can connect to your software.
The best thing about these types of pages? They tend to be very high intent (yeah, we’re talking BOFU here), meaning pSEO is the most scalable way to give your audience specific information about how your integrations work (and bring in conversions along the way). Long story short, pSEO is a no-brainer if your tool has lots of integrations.
Real example: Increasing conversions by 3x with high-intent integration pages
One of the biggest pSEO myths is that it doesn’t translate into real revenue, but our client would have to disagree. This client is a middleware SaaS in the hospitality space, and while they had some information about their integrations on their website, they were lacking high-intent pages where website visitors could find out more about each tool in detail.
So we worked our pSEO magic to create three tiers of pages: Partner pages, partner integration pages, and how-to pages. That way, we could cover every possible scenario a searcher might be interested in. We ended up creating 1700 pages across these three tiers.
Despite almost 99% of the keyword variations we used having 0 search volume, our pSEO expertise, combined with reviewing session recordings of people using the website, convinced us that our client’s website visitors wanted to learn more about their integrations.
The results? Even though A rel=”nofollow” target=”_blank” hrefs assured us that there was zero search volume for these pages, they generated over 18k sessions and 86k page views in just 12 months. Within just four months, our client saw these results:
- 35% increase in site-wide conversion
- Integration pages converting better than any other page on the website
- 72% increase in demo requests in compared to the month prior, exclusively from integration pages
- Integration pages generating 40% of all SEO-driven demo requests and 20% of demo requests across all marketing channels
The success of our client’s integrations pages pSEO project speaks for itself, with these pages keeping visitors on the website longer than other pages.
Expert tip: One of the last steps a business takes when deciding to acquire a new tool is researching whether it fits well into their existing tech stack. Making this information easily accessible on a large scale helps potential customers move forward quickly and shortens the buyer journey, which is why using pSEO for integrations pages is such a good business opportunity.
Use case: Product-driven content
Chances are your customers are all pretty unique. We’re sure you’ve got multiple buyer personas, and your product may also have various use cases. In a perfect world, you’d be able to create content that resonates with each and every type of customer, zeroing in on why exactly they may want to use your product.
Done manually, that’s no easy feat. But it’s no problem for pSEO. When creating product-driven content using pSEO, you can use a long-tail keyword like “project management software for [X]” where X is a placeholder depending on the use case or persona you’re targeting with each page.
By using dynamic modifiers and templated content, you can create landing pages like “project management software for architects” or “project management software for construction projects.” Because whether they’re a software engineer or work in HR, your customers aren’t going to do a Google search for a generic tool when they can search for a solution that’s specifically designed for their needs.
Real example: Creating niche-specific content at scale for unique personas and use cases
If you haven’t already seen her on LinkedIn, Emilia Korczynska, Head of Marketing at Userpilot, has a lot of good stuff to say about programmatic SEO. In a post, she talks about a normal SEO strategy she tried out in a previous role: Generating content based around niche-specific keywords.
The results were really impressive, with this niche-specific content driving over 10% of all traffic to the blog with one of the blog posts boasting a 4.1% conversion rate.
In her role at Userpilot, Emilia frequently uses pSEO to amp up content ops and drive more organic traffic, and she recommends turning this type of approach into a pSEO project.She suggests you can create hundreds of BOFU posts in way less time and for way less money than what it would take to generate them manually. She presents this example:
For each combination of 2 variables, let’s say “best [use case] tools for [persona],” with only 10 use cases and 10 personas, you can create 45 blog posts for the “price” of 20. With 100 use cases and 100 personas, this number goes up to 4950 posts for the amount of effort it would take you to produce 200 traditional methods!
Targeting several niches as your modifiers allows you to create thousands of unique pages that truly resonate with each type of buyer persona and their specific use case, helping you drive not only traffic but also conversions at a fraction of the cost. If that’s not good ROI, then we’re not sure what is.
You can download Emilia’s pSEO template on Patreon to generate hundreds of unique pages targeted at different buyer persona and use case combinations.
Expert tip: As an added benefit of this use case, pSEO is a quick way to see who your product could resonate with. Especially for early-stage companies who are covering a bigger total available market, this strategy can help you test who your audience is to nail your positioning, and you can even combine use cases with your personas to get more granular. From the leads you acquire through different pages, you can note which pages (hence which use cases/personas) are converting with least friction and turning in bigger deals.
Use case: Competitor-focused content
Our clients are often hesitant to mention their competitors in their content, but just because you’re not talking about them doesn’t mean your customers aren’t hearing about them.
When you create competitor-focused content, you control the narrative. Whether it’s alternatives pages, you vs. competitor pages, and competitor vs. competitor pages, you decidehow you position your product against your competitors,grabbing traffic from them in the process. And even if you don’t have any direct competitors, you can create pages around indirect competitors, bringing in potential customers who may not have heard of your brand otherwise.
pSEO is a great strategy for creating competitor-focused content because it allows you to generate these pages at scale. Even if you don’t have a ton of competitors, you can add variables to generate hundreds of unique pages, for example “[Tool1] vs. [Tool2] – which is better for [persona]” or “best tools for [use case].”
Real example: Generating millions of page views with competitor and alternatives pages
Here’s a pSEO example you may not know you’re already familiar with: G2’s comparison, alternatives, and best software pages. Ever find yourself searching “compare Hootsuite and Sprout Social” or “best marketing automation software”? Chances are you’ve come across a G2 page in the results.
According to Practical Programmatic, these pages bring G2 millions of visits per month, all thanks to the review site’s pSEO strategy. G2 generates both landing pages and blog posts (yes, you can create blog posts with pSEO too!) to scale content generation and boost organic traffic.
Some of G2’s pSEO keywords include “top [app] alternatives,” “compare [software 1] and [software 2],” and “best [business area] software or service.” While you’re probably not a review site like G2, you can definitely use keywords like these to generate content around your direct and indirect competitors at scale, directing traffic to your website when a potential customer searches for information about another related tool.
Generating comparison pages at scale using pSEO helps G2 bring in thousands of visits per month.
Expert tip: If you don’t have direct competitors and are still building your category, the possibility for exploration using pSEO is such a good opportunity. Since many of the keywords you use may be low in search volume, that means the majority of larger brands won’t be targeting them because of the high costs of creating these pages.Using pSEO allows you to create pages with a much lower cost on a much larger scale, helping you pinpoint which alternative tools and use cases get the most attention while pushing the topic to the top of search results.
Find the right pSEO use case for your business and see real results
If there’s one thing we want you to take away from this article it’s this: Just because cool kids like Zapier and G2 are doing it, that doesn’t mean you should base your strategy on their approach. That’s not to say integration pages and competitor-focused content can’t work for you, but your strategy needs to reflect which pSEO use case is best for your business.
Think from the customer’s perspective. Ask yourself one simple question: What content do my current customers need that I can create at scale?
When you take a product-led, customer-first approach, a pSEO campaign can bring you not only loads of organic traffic, clicks, and conversions but also plenty of quick insightful data about your audience and their preferences.
Long story short: When done right, pSEO is extremely effective in getting you big results without spending your whole marketing budget, and it also gets you thinking strategically about how to target your customers and even develop your product.
Frequently asked questions about programmatic SEO examples
What is programmatic SEO and how does it benefit SaaS companies?
pSEO is a marketing strategy that uses automated processes and scripts to generate large numbers of web pages and optimize them for search engines. It benefits SaaS companies because it’s a much quicker and more economical solution compared to creating and publishing the same pages manually, helping you bring in more traffic and conversions with fewer resources.
Can you give examples of programmatic SEO use cases in SaaS?
Some examples of pSEO use cases in SaaS include:
- Local SEO pages
- Integration pages
- Product use case pages
- Different buyer persona pages
- Competitor pages
- Alternatives pages
How can we avoid common pitfalls in programmatic SEO for SaaS?
To avoid common pSEO challenges when running a pSEO project for your SaaS company, you should:
- Direct Google’s crawlers toward your programmatic pages to avoid slow indexing
- Use Google’s developer tools and follow best practices to ensure your website speed doesn’t suffer
- Focus on search intent and topical integrity to prevent cannibalization
- Create people-first content to strengthen your brand and future-proof your content and search-engine performance
Is it necessary to hire an agency or can SaaS companies manage programmatic SEO in-house?
With the right knowledge and resources, you can manage a pSEO project in-house at your SaaS company. You don’t always need advanced technical expertise or coding knowledge to run a successful pSEO project.
However, if you don’t have enough team members or bandwidth to cover all the aspects that go into running a pSEo project, from creating a targeted strategy and generating databases to writing and editing the content, it’s a good idea to partner with an agency with expertise in pSEO.
What’s the timeframe for seeing results with programmatic SEO in SaaS?
While we know SEO has a longer feedback loop compared to other channels like paid ads or social media, pSEO can start giving you results within months. For example, within just four months, one of our client’s pSEO pages became the best-performing pages on their entire website, tripling their conversions in the same amount of time. Learn more about this success story in our case study.
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