The programmatic planner works out whether a templated page set is worth building, how many pages it should actually contain, and what has to be genuinely different on each one. Most programmatic projects fail on that last point, and the planner’s main job is to stop a set being built that shouldn’t be.
Built in-house. It is my own tooling rather than a reseller’s dashboard, which is why it checks the things I act on rather than everything a generic tool can measure.
What it does
Programmatic SEO means generating a set of pages from a template and a data source: one per location, per product type, per combination. Done well, each page answers a real search with real information. Done badly, it’s the same page with a word swapped, which Google’s spam policies describe as scaled content abuse regardless of how it was produced.
The planner decides which of those two a proposed set would be, before anything is built.
The tests a set has to pass
| Test | What it means |
|---|---|
| Real demand | People actually search this pattern, with volume per variant rather than for the pattern as a whole |
| Real data | Every page has genuinely different information, not just a different noun in the same sentences |
| A real answer | Someone landing on one page finds what they came for without needing the others |
| A sensible size | The set stops where the data or the demand stops |
| Somewhere to live | A hub, navigation and internal links exist or get built alongside |
| Maintainable | The data source stays current, or the pages go stale together |
The second test is the one that kills most proposals, and it should. If the only difference between two pages is a place name, they aren’t two pages.
Where to stop
Programmatic sets tend to grow because the combinations multiply. Three product types across forty locations is a hundred and twenty pages, and about ninety of them usually have no demand and no distinct data behind them.
The planner sizes the set to where both run out. A set of thirty strong pages beats one of three hundred thin ones, and it also avoids the outcome where a thin set drags on the rest of the site.
Indexing controls
A large set needs deciding in advance what happens to the pages that don’t earn their place. That means an indexing rule from the start, a way to measure per-page performance, and a willingness to remove or consolidate the ones that fail.
Publishing the set and hoping is how sites end up with several thousand pages that earn nothing and cost crawl budget.
Example output
PROPOSAL: Service pages for 40 UK towns. DEMAND: Real for 11 towns. Negligible for the rest. DATA: Genuinely different content available for 11: local pricing, coverage, and named case work. The other 29 would differ by name only. VERDICT: Build 11. Do not build 29. STRUCTURE: Needs a coverage hub and menu links, which don’t exist yet.
What I review
Demand is checked per variant rather than for the pattern, because a pattern with good total volume often has almost all of it concentrated in a handful of variants.
Every proposed set is also checked against what the site already has, since the pages frequently already exist in some form and the real job is consolidation rather than generation.
Limitations
- Volume without value is a risk, not a strategy. Google’s spam policies apply to scaled content however it’s made.
- Data quality decides everything. A set built on an inconsistent source produces confidently wrong pages.
- These sets need maintaining, and a set nobody updates ages badly and all at once.
Services it powers
The programmatic planner powers programmatic SEO and supports product and category page copy on large catalogues. See the rest of the tools on the tech stack page.
FAQ
Is programmatic SEO against Google’s guidelines?
Not in itself. Google’s spam policies target scaled content produced primarily to manipulate rankings rather than to help people, and they apply however the content is made. A set where every page carries genuinely different, useful information is not what those policies describe.
How many pages should a programmatic set have?
As many as have both real search demand and genuinely different data behind them, which is almost always fewer than the number of possible combinations. Thirty strong pages are worth more than three hundred thin ones, and they don’t drag on the rest of the site.
What makes a programmatic page thin?
Having nothing on it that couldn’t be produced by swapping one word in a template. If two pages in the set differ only by a place name or a product name, they aren’t two pages, and search engines are good at recognising that.
See the whole toolkit
The tech stack page lists every tool, and the free assessment covers whether a templated set would help.