Increase Your WordPress Visibility: A Step-by-Step Guide to Programmatic SEO

Imagine effortlessly scaling your website’s visibility across search engines, outpacing competitors, and capturing untapped market share – all while you sleep. This is the promise of programmatic SEO for WordPress.

Many website owners struggle with time-consuming manual SEO tasks, creating unique content at scale, and maintaining consistency across numerous pages. Programmatic SEO offers a solution to these challenges.

This guide will walk you through the benefits, tools, and real-world applications of programmatic SEO in WordPress. You’ll learn how to automate and optimize your SEO efforts, freeing up time to focus on other aspects of your business while still driving organic traffic growth.

What is programmatic SEO in WordPress?

Programmatic SEO, or pSEO, automates search engine optimization for large websites. Instead of manually optimizing each page, which can be time-consuming, programmatic SEO uses tools to create and optimize many pages at once.

In WordPress, this approach takes advantage of the platform’s flexibility. It works by using spreadsheets or similar data files to store information that will appear on your web pages. Think of these spreadsheets as organized lists of content – they might include product details, location information, or any other data you want to display across multiple pages.

WordPress then uses templates that pull information from these spreadsheets. For example, if you run a bakery chain, your spreadsheet might list all your locations, their addresses, and their specialties. The template would know where to place this information on each page, creating individual pages for each bakery location automatically.

This method is especially useful for websites that need many similar pages, like online stores, directories, or businesses with multiple locations.

Why you need programmatic SEO

Benefits of programmatic SEO

Programmatic SEO offers several key advantages for WordPress sites, addressing common pain points of manual SEO efforts and providing significant gains in the following areas:

• Scalability: You can create and optimize thousands of pages quickly. This is perfect for big websites with lots of products, locations, or content.
• Efficiency: Things like updating meta tags, making sitemaps, and following SEO rules are all automated. This frees you up to focus on other parts of your business.
• Cost-effectiveness: You’ll spend less on manual work, which is great for smaller businesses trying to compete with the big fish in search results.
• Consistency: All your pages will follow the same SEO standards. This helps maintain a strong SEO profile and avoids messy inconsistencies.
• Precision: You can tailor content for specific audiences or regions. This means better performance for targeted searches.
• Adaptability: When search algorithms change, as they often do, you can quickly update all your pages. This keeps your site optimized as SEO rules evolve.

Remember, though, that programmatic SEO isn’t a complete substitute for good content. Use it alongside high-value and SEO-optimized content for the best results. When done right, it can boost your traffic, improve your search rankings, and bring in more customers, as explored below.

Examples of programmatic SEO in action

Programmatic SEO isn’t just theory – it delivers tangible results across a range of industries.

Take the example of KrispCall, a cloud-based virtual phone system. In 2023, the company implemented an SEO strategy that involved using programmatic SEO to generate 535 new pages. Around 80% of them were for area codes in the US. You can see a section from the page for the Los Angeles-based 213 area code below.

When these pages went live, they made up 82% of all traffic from the US during the month where the study ran. All in all, the KrispCall website upped its traffic from just 154 at launch in April 2021 to over 2 million as of August 2023.

KrispCall isn’t alone. Some of the biggest names in tech have embraced programmatic SEO to dominate their industries:

• Amazon uses pSEO to generate product category pages and optimize listings at scale.

• Wise, an international money transfer platform, uses pSEO to create pages for all the possible currency conversions.

• Kayak, a travel search engine, creates dynamic pages for various flight routes and destinations.

• Zapier, a platform for creating integrations and automating workflows, has implemented pSEO to create pages for each possible app integration it offers.

• Yelp, a crowdsourced review platform, uses pSEO to create pages for the businesses its users have reviewed.

• Webflow, a website builder, uses it to generate landing pages for its user-created templates.

• Expedia, a Kayak competitor, uses pSEO for travel-related pages and destination information.

How to implement programmatic SEO in WordPress

Using dedicated plugins

There are several WordPress plugins that you can use to implement programmatic SEO:

• SEOPress offers a comprehensive set of tools for managing meta titles, descriptions, and Open Graph tags. It’s affordable and user-friendly, making it ideal for scaling SEO efforts.
• WP All Import can import large amounts of data from sources and automatically create SEO-friendly posts and pages. This is particularly useful for bulk content creation and optimization.
• Multiple Pages Generator can generate thousands of unique pages quickly, optimizing each for SEO. This plugin is excellent for creating large-scale, SEO-optimized content structures.
• Page Generator Pro offers features for creating content at scale, including keyword-rich templates and automated page creation. It’s a powerful tool for implementing programmatic SEO strategies.

Using WordPress plugins for programmatic SEO provides benefits such as:

• User-friendliness: Most plugins are designed with user-friendliness in mind, making them accessible even for non-technical users.
• Easier integration: These plugins directly integrate with WordPress, as opposed to external tools, providing a smoother user experience.
• Regular updates: They’re frequently updated by their developers to keep up with the latest SEO trends and algorithm changes.
• Variety of options: There is a vast array of programmatic SEO plugins available, each offering different features and capabilities. This variety allows users to choose plugins that best suit their specific needs and preferences.
• Cost-effective: They’re generally more cost-effective than developing custom programmatic SEO solutions. This affordability makes them an attractive option for small businesses and individual website owners.

However, this approach also has some cons:

• Performance impact: Using too many plugins can slow down website performance, leading to longer load times and potentially affecting user experience and search engine rankings.
• Limited customization: They may not provide the same level of customization as a custom-built solution. Users with very specific needs may find plugins restrictive.
• Compatibility issues: Installing multiple plugins can sometimes lead to conflicts, causing functionality issues or even website crashes. Compatibility problems can arise, especially if plugins are not regularly updated.
• Security risks: Plugins that are not updated regularly can become security vulnerabilities. Hackers may exploit outdated plugins to gain unauthorized access to the website, compromising its security.
• Limited advanced features: For complex SEO needs, plugins may not offer the highly specialized features required. Advanced SEO strategies might necessitate custom solutions beyond what standard plugins can provide.

How to implement programmatic SEO in WordPress with Multiple Page Generator

If you’re interested in getting started with pSEO as fast as possible, here’s how to do it with MPG:

1. Download, install, and activate the plugin

2. From the admin dashboard, go to MPG > Create New + to start a fresh pSEO project.

3. At the MPG Setup screen, choose From scratch if you already have a data file you want to work with. This walkthrough will use the World cities template for illustration. Please note that you can only have one active project on the free version.

4. Wait for the process to complete. Keep your eyes on the top right of the screen for a green toast letting you know the dataset has been deployed

.

5. Go through the settings to verify that everything looks good. Scroll to the bottom and click on URL preview to see a sample page. Alternatively, click on See all URLs to browse more pages. The pages below use a template whose header is in the format “Tour to the beautiful city of {{mpg_city}} in {{mpg_country}}”:

6. When you’re satisfied, click on Save changes.

Using external tools

You can also implement programmatic SEO in WordPress without plugins, using external tools. These solutions integrate with WordPress from outside the ecosystem, sometimes requiring API interaction, which might be challenging for non-developers.

Typically, they’re no-code SaaS products, such as SEOMatic, Letterdrop, and SEOpital.

They offer benefits such as:

• Enhanced features: These tools are often more powerful and feature-rich than plugins, providing advanced functionalities. Most notably, these often also work with other CMS platforms, and tools like Letterdrop can turn audio and visual content into pSEO-focused blog posts. 
• Multi-platform compatibility: Unlike WordPress-specific plugins, these tools can work across multiple platforms, offering greater flexibility.
• Advanced automation: They may offer more sophisticated automation capabilities, streamlining SEO tasks more efficiently.
• Scalability: Designed for scalability, these tools can handle large amounts of data, making them suitable for growing businesses.
• Dedicated support: They often come with dedicated support and training resources, ensuring users can make the most of their features.

However, using external tools comes with some challenges, like:

• Technical complexity: They may require more technical knowledge to set up and use effectively, posing a challenge for less tech-savvy users.
• Higher costs: These tools can be more expensive than plugins, especially at the enterprise level.
• Integration challenges: They might not integrate as smoothly with WordPress as native plugins, potentially complicating the setup.
• Data transfer hurdles: Additional steps may be needed to import/export data between the tool and WordPress, adding to the complexity.
• Learning curve: Team members, especially the non-technical ones, may face a learning curve when adopting these tools.

Getting expert help

If you don’t have the technical expertise to implement pSEO yourself and don’t have the time to learn how to do so, a WordPress development expert can help. They can work with you to determine and implement the best programmatic SEO solution for your needs, whether it’s a plugin or connecting to an external service via the WordPress REST API.

Partnering with a specialist can elevate your SEO strategy through:

• Customized solutions: Experts can create unique, highly customized solutions tailored to your unique needs, giving you a competitive edge.
• Optimized performance: They can optimize for performance and scalability, ensuring your website continues to run efficiently as it grows.
• Complex integration: Experts can support complex SEO strategies and integrate advanced tools directly into the WordPress architecture, providing a solid SEO solution.
• Full control: You gain complete control over features and functionality, allowing for a highly personalized and flexible website.

📌 Keep in mind that you may become dependent on the developer for major changes or issues, which could be a drawback if they’re not readily available. There’s also a risk of over-engineering if requirements aren’t clearly defined, leading to unnecessary complexity and unexpected costs. To avoid this, make sure you work with a developer with enough experience to chart a practical path forward from the outset rather than figuring things out as they go along.

Let Codeable help you skyrocket your WordPress site’s visibility with programmatic SEO

Programmatic SEO significantly benefits WordPress sites by automating repetitive tasks and enabling efficient management of large content volumes. This approach can improve search engine rankings and increase organic traffic, saving time and resources while boosting online visibility.

Codeable provides access to a network of vetted WordPress experts specializing in programmatic SEO and other critical areas. This includes developers who specialize in pSEO and possess a deep understanding of SEO techniques like semantic markup and performance optimizations.

Plus, Codeable’s Retainer option allows you to reserve an expert for ongoing SEO tasks, ensuring continuous optimization of your WordPress site.

Submit your project to Codeable today and take the first step towards automating your SEO efforts and unlocking your site’s full potential in search engine results!