programmatic-seolisted

# Programmatic SEO Generate hundreds or thousands of pages from a template and a dataset — but **decide whether it pays back before writing the first one**. Programmatic SEO fails in a predictable way: a team multiplies page count by search volume, gets a large number, builds ten thousand pages, and discovers that most were never indexed and almost none rank. The arithmetic that matters isn't `pages × volume`. It's the funnel: how many pages get indexed, how many of those reach page one, and what each one is worth. Run that first. It kills most programmatic projects, which is the point — the ones it doesn't kill are worth doing properly. The second thing that decides the outcome is whether each page deserves to exist. A page assembled from a template and facts anyone can look up is what Google's scaled-content-abuse policy targets. Unique per-page data is not a nice-to-have; it is the difference between an asset and a liability. ## When to use The user has a dataset, a directory, or a head-term × modifier pattern and wants to turn it into search-targeted pages at scale. For a single page, use `seo-content-brief` instead. ## Before you start 1. **Read the brand/product context** (`.agents/product-marketing.md`) for the offer these pages should route toward. 2. **Establish the pattern.** What's the head term, what varies, and where does the data come from? "Best {tool} for {industry}" needs both lists and a real basis for the ranking. 3. **Find the unique data.** For eac