Top 5 Programmatic SEO Challenges and Ways to Overcome Them

Ever wondered how your competitors manage to rank on top of the SERPs?

You can also dominate search engine rankings like your competitors by creating multiple SEO-optimized website pages targeting hundreds of keywords. 

Leveraging the power of programmatic SEO elevates your user experience by ensuring your website’s content is authoritative and decodes the user's search intent. 

Programmatic SEO (pSEO) uses sophisticated algorithms to scan and analyze data related to your website to identify areas for improvement. This can save days or weeks compared to traditional methods, which involve a lot of manual labor and guesswork. 

But with great power comes great challenges. This article will discuss the most common programmatic SEO challenges and ways to conquer them.

Also Read: Programmatic SEO For SaaS: How to do it the Right Way

Programmatic SEO Challenges and How to Solve Them

Programmatic SEO is an SEO strategy that automates the creation of multiple web pages to target specific long-tail keywords. Businesses use this process to rapidly generate valuable content and scale their online presence. 

Programmatic SEO has evolved as a robust approach for scaling content creation and optimization to increase discoverability on search engines. However, you might need to consider specific issues it brings. 

So, let's discuss some of the most critical programmatic SEO problems and how to fix them.

1. Keyword cannibalization

Keyword cannibalization happens when you create numerous web pages targeting one keyword, and they end up fighting with each other for the same spot in search results. Instead of improving your SEO, it actually splits your SEO power.

Keyword cannibalization affects your visibility by confusing search engines, making it unclear which page to rank higher—often resulting in lower rankings for all affected pages.

This programmatic SEO problem occurs if you skip a thorough review while using AI tools like content generators or keyword research software. These tools may produce similar content without fully understanding each page's purpose and relevance.

The solution:

• Audit and consolidate overlapping content regularly. 
• Do a comprehensive keyword mapping exercise. 
• Merge pages that are competing for the same keyword into one. 
• Use keyword clustering tools to figure out which terms should be prioritized on each page, preventing any overlaps. 

Also Read: 10 B2B SEO Trends and What They Mean for Business

2. Battling with duplicate content

When you're creating content at scale, AI tools might produce similar or duplicate content across multiple pages inadvertently. It can confuse search engines and dilute your SEO efforts. Or, what's even worse, they may drop your rankings for plagiarism.

Additionally, it can decrease click-through rates (CTR) and make you wonder which page to optimize.

Let’s understand this with the help of an example. You have a location-based website that runs on pSEO, creating content on the 'Best places to visit and eat in Asia.' Suppose it creates 10 thousand pages on it. There is a possibility of repeated content in the pages generated.

The solution:

• Implement canonical tags to indicate preferred versions of similar content.
• Use article spinners to rewrite and spin sentences that help you avoid duplicate pages.
• Opt for robots.txt or add meta robots with no index tags on particular pages to prevent SERPs from crawling and indexing repetitive content.
• Extract a list of dynamic templates that pull unique data for each page.

3. Slow Google indexing

Fix slow Google indexing issues

Imagine you are at a buffet, and the chef serves you multiple similar dishes. This is exactly what mass page creation does to Google's index.

However, Google's algorithm is brilliant; it is designed to detect and potentially penalize sites that prioritize low-quality content and spammy backlinks.

In the scaling game, slow Google indexing can be a significant roadblock. This delay in indexing will not only impact your search engine rankings but also hit your organic traffic and reduce visibility.

Google can take some time to crawl new website pages, especially if your site has low domain authority. It is because Google bots need to trust the website to crawl web pages, even when you implement pSEO.

Another reason you may encounter this programmatic SEO problem is your slow site speed. If your website takes more than 2-3 seconds to respond to requests, Google reduces its crawling frequency, thereby increasing the bounce rate.

The solution:

• Use internal links to help Google discover and understand your content hierarchy.
• Set up Google's indexing API. With the API integrated into your site, you can inform Google whenever a new page is published, and they will schedule time for crawling.
• Fix broken links and redirect inactive pages.
• Ensure your server can handle the crawl rate.

4. Thin content

One of the programmatic SEO challenges is maintaining content quality while producing content at scale.

Some users prioritize quantity over quality, but this approach can backfire tremendously. If your website delivers content that lacks depth and quality and does not meet the user's search intent, it will provide little to no value to your readers. This 'no value content' is referred to as 'thin' content.

💡Pro tip: Quality should always be the trump card. Make sure each of your web pages offers value and answers search intent quickly. This will encourage Google to rank your website higher in the search results after analyzing that your content meets people's wants and needs.

But how do you identify if your content is thin or not? Well, it's quite easy. You should see if your content piece answers all your customer's queries and resonates with their needs.

Google is all about promoting content that demonstrates your expertise, experience, authority, and trustworthiness. If your content is low-quality, it will likely get buried in the search results. Plus, make sure your blog's word count is at least 1500 words, which is the sweet spot for search engines.

The solution:

• Offer comprehensive information around keywords while offering statistics. 
• Target one keyword per topic. 
• Incorporate real-time data or user-generated content to add unique value to each page. 
• Set up automated and manual processes to review content before it goes live. 

5. URL changes

When your site has multiple pages, and each page potentially links to dozens of others, a change in URL can create a spiderweb of 404 errors.

Another detrimental impact that URL change brings is that it affects Google’s crawling and indexing.

For example, if your website's old URL, https://www.yoursite.com/marketingservices, is changed to https://www.yoursite.com/marketingservice, search engine spiders will treat it as a completely new page.

Changes in URLs also cause a huge loss in hard-earned link equity. As external links are an integral part of off-page SEO, any change in these links will cause your site to lose all the backlinks it has acquired over the years. Due to the change in URLs, all those backlinks lead to a dead end.

The solution:

• Ensure that the pages are self-canonical. It will signal search engines which URL variant your site indicates to index and eliminate the possibility of rank cannibalization. 
• Audit your website for broken links and implement 301 redirects to transfer the SEO value of the old URL to the new one. It will make it easy for the new URL to rank for the same keywords and appear in the search results. 
• Update the XML sitemap and make sure it is submitted to the Google Search Console. 
• Use internal linking strategies to direct crawlers to new URLs. 

Programmatic SEO Problems and Solutions: Case Study

Freightify helps freight forwarders improve their key metrics across organizations by reducing operational cost, processing and increasing quote win ratio. It is a SaaS platform that enables forwarders to create a digital storefront to serve their customers better.

But here's the twist: Freightify needed its own killer strategy to attract more businesses to its platform.

This is why Freightify opted for TripleDart services to scale their business growth. 

TripleDart conducted a comprehensive SEO audit of Freightify's website to identify issues that needed improvement. The primary objective of this analysis was to increase their brand awareness, expand audience reach, and drive organic traffic by letting them stay optimized in SERPs. 

We identified high-value, low-competition keywords, and generated content accordingly, which led to 1K visitors from these programmatic SEO pages, which are already generating demos with a traffic-to-demo conversion rate of 1 to 1.5%.

We aimed at creating a comprehensive content strategy, covering the entire funnel—from TOFU (top of the funnel) to MOFU (middle of the funnel)—targeting various awareness stages. 

Goal

Build brand awareness and rank higher on Google to generate more leads and, hence, conversions.

Challenge 

The high-intent keywords were relatively low because the industry is very narrow. Plus, they needed an SEO strategy in place. Therefore, TripleDart had to work from scratch. From optimizing meta-descriptions to enhancing site speed, every detail was fine-tuned to perfection.

Strategy

We just didn’t use a few tricks to expand their reach but also used many digital marketing strategies to attract more business to its platforms:

1. SEO-optimization: Climbing the search ladder

We produced 50+ pages of high-quality content and 10 to 15 keyword-driven blog posts in a go. We also used Google Sheets as the database and connected it with Webflow to generate these pages quickly and efficiently. This ensured that when businesses searched for freight services, Freightify was right at the top.

2. Content funnel: A journey through each product feature

TripleDart created a unique content funnel for each of Freightify’s product categories according to their geography. 

As Frieghtify is an effective logistics and shipping planning company, we at TripleDart ensured to identify the right clusters for their programmatic SEO strategy, focusing on conversions (demos/free trials) rather than just traffic.

We also used tools like Byword.io to find programmatic content ideas and align them with their personas and product use cases. 

3. Top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) content: Capturing a broad audience and introducing the offerings

If you want to catch a big fish, you will need a big net, and this is the strategy that we focused on. By creating TOFU content that resonates with a broader audience, drawing them into Freightify’s world of freight procurement services. This not only helped them stay relevant but also gained authority.  

For example, we picked the keyword “best freight tracking software” and ensured they ranked first in search engines in every country they offer their services.

4. Backlinks: Building digital bridges

We improved Freightify’s domain authority and drove organic traffic by building high-quality backlinks from reputed websites. These high-quality backlinks not only helped boost SEO but also established Freightify as an authoritative source in the freight forwarding industry.

Results

Although numbers speak for themselves, let’s shout them from the rooftop anyway:

Also Read: The Ultimate SaaS SEO Checklist for 2024

Ready to Transform your SEO Strategy and Boost ROI?

Whether you're targeting a local market or going global, programmatic SEO allows you to scale your optimization efforts without proportionally scaling your resources.

The main goal of programmatic SEO is to drive organic traffic by using relevant long-tail keywords while minimizing keyword cannibalization. 

Start publishing landing pages on a large scale to address the growing amount of traffic. 

The best part? Mastering programmatic SEO allows you to create content that directly addresses the specific needs of your target audience.

Don't let your SEO strategy get stuck in a slow lane! Partnering with an efficient digital marketing agency can help you streamline and enhance your SEO efforts.

Programmatic SEO, combined with the power of TripleDart, a leading performance marketing agency, eliminates all the guesswork. Instead of depending on manual processes, your programmatic SEO campaign is guided by automation and data-driven insights to drive traffic and visibility in search engines.

‍Book an intro Call today and watch your business reach new heights!