Maybe your HVAC company targets local cities within a small metro area, or perhaps you own a national HVAC business that serves customers in multiple states. Whatever the case, programmatic SEO is your ticket to creating high-ranking web pages that are laser-focused on your target audience.
Not sure what programmatic SEO is or how to use it for your HVAC company? Relentless Digital, a provider of leading HVAC SEO services, explains everything you need to know below.
What Is Programmatic SEO?
You’ve probably heard of “traditional” SEO. It involves using techniques like keyword optimization and link building to help your pages rank more highly in the SERPs.
Traditional SEO works well, but let’s face it, it can be very time-consuming. That’s where programmatic SEO pages come in. With this strategy, you use a special program to generate landing pages instantly based on your target keywords. When done right, these unique landing pages quickly enjoy a jump in the search rankings.
Programmatic SEO vs. Programmatic Advertising
Programmatic SEO and programmatic advertising aren’t the same thing. If you intend to use both, it’s helpful to understand what makes them different.
Programmatic SEO allows you to create thousands of pages targeted to specific search queries and audiences. Programmatic advertising, on the other hand, relies on automation software to purchase ad slots on various media channels.
Try both of these strategies and watch your HVAC company soar in the search engine results pages.
Awesome Programmatic SEO Examples
Big-name companies have been using programmatic SEO to easily craft landing pages to match search intent and attract organic traffic for years. Check out these examples to inspire your SEO strategy.
Yelp
Yelp is the go-to source when you’re looking for a new restaurant or something to do near you. The company uses programmatic SEO for all of its business searches, and those programmatic landing pages rank very well in the SERPs.
TripAdvisor
Do a search for “best things to do in San Antonio” or “hotels in Denver,” and you’ll likely see TripAdvisor results at the top of the SERPs. That’s because TripAdvisor uses programmatic SEO tools to make thousands of city-specific variations from a single template page.
Zapier
Zapier is a case study in programmatic SEO done right. The company employs user-generated content for its “integrations” keywords, allowing it to easily create content with almost no effort.
And that quality content consistently shows up at the top of the SERPs. For example, suppose you want to integrate Google Sheets for your HVAC company. You search for “Google Sheets integration.” Odds are good that Zapier will pop up as one of the top results for Google Sheets integrations.
Why Use Programmatically Generated Pages?
If you run a small or medium-sized HVAC business and don’t need to create thousands of pages, are programmatic pages worth your time? Absolutely! With this technique, you can build landing pages that are perfectly targeted to match user intent.
Let’s explore some of the perks you’ll enjoy when you take advantage of programmatic SEO for landing pages.
Cut Down on Time-Consuming Content Generation
Sick of spending hours each week creating content for your HVAC website? We get it; content creation is tough. It can take ages to come up with ideas, find relevant keywords, and research commercial search intent for a single blog post. That’s time better spent on finding new customers.
With programmatic SEO, you can create pages at scale in minutes. That means no more spending an eternity on written content.
Quickly Adjust Your Strategy for Market Trends
Suppose there’s a sudden shift in market trends and content that worked well before suddenly plummets in the SERPs. Programmatic SEO allows you to make new pages in no time.
Reach More Potential Customers
Want to expand your HVAC service area? Programmatic SEO is an excellent tool to add to your content strategy. Use it to create localized landing pages for various cities and watch the customers come flocking.
Create Personalized Experiences To Match Search Intent
Are you familiar with the various stages of the buyer’s journey? They include awareness, consideration, and decision. Programmatic SEO allows you to create a different landing page for each stage of the buyer’s journey.
For example, suppose a user searches for “Is my air conditioner broken?” You’d want to serve them a different page than you would for a user who searches for “schedule HVAC repair near me.” Programmatic SEO instantly adjusts to match the user’s search intent.
Develop Content at Scale
Crafting dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of landing pages takes an extraordinary amount of time. Content marketing becomes a total breeze when you add programmatic SEO to your repertoire.
Send Your Pages Skyrocketing in the Search Results
Even if your landing pages are already ranking well in the SERPs, it takes a ton of work to stay at the top and attract good search traffic. You can use programmatic SEO to easily rank well in the SERPs and stay there.
Outrank Your HVAC Competition
Are you spending too much on ads in an effort to outrank the competition? Because programmatic content marketing consistently keeps your landing pages near the top of the SERPs, you’ll be able to slash your monthly ad spend while outperforming the competition.
Myths About Programmatic Pages
There are a few myths floating around about programmatic SEO, some of which keep HVAC businesses from taking full advantage of this incredibly useful tool.
The first myth is that developing a programmatic SEO strategy takes a ton of time. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Automation is the name of the game here. Once you have your programmatic SEO project set up, you can create hundreds of pages in just seconds.
The second myth is that learning programmatic SEO is difficult. It’s true that it does involve a bit of coding, but you can opt for no-code tools if programming isn’t your forte.
The last myth is that programmatic pages are nothing but spam. This is only true if your pages don’t provide useful content. Make sure your pages meet the user’s search intent, and you’re golden.
Creating Landing Pages With Programmatic SEO
Now that we’ve covered the perks of programmatic SEO, are you ready to put it into action? Here’s how to create the perfect landing page template.
Keyword Research
Great programmatic SEO starts with keyword research. A keyword research tool makes this step a total breeze. Here are a few types of keywords that you’ll want to target for each landing page.
Broad Terms/Head Terms
A head term is a broad, short-tail keyword such as “HVAC” or “air conditioning.” These terms tend to have high competition, high search volume, and low conversion rates. Thus, you’ll only want to focus on a few head terms for each specific page.
Head Term Modifiers
A modifier is a keyword that you can attach to a head term. Modified head terms typically have better conversion rates. There are two types of modifiers you can attach to a head term:
- Primary modifiers: You can add these modifiers to head terms to create a new category. For example, you could add “Chinese” or “BBQ” to the term “restaurant.”
- Secondary modifiers: These modifiers describe head terms; for example, “HVAC near me” or “HVAC in New York.”
Long-Tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords tend to have a lower monthly search volume but a higher conversion rate. Long-tail keywords target users who have reached the final stage of the buyer’s journey.
For your HVAC company, you could use a long-tail keyword like “book air conditioning repair in [your city].”
Page Template Design
Creating your programmatic page template is perhaps the most important part of programmatic SEO. Your template is what the program will use to create all of your pages, so be sure to build it properly right off the bat.
If you’re not sure where to start, create a page wireframe. Your wireframe should have headings, call-to-actions, hero text, and other important content. You can find plenty of examples of good wireframes with a quick Google search.
Data Collection
You want your pages and written content to be unique, so make sure to collect data from a wide variety of data sources. Data collection methods include:
- Curating user-generated content
- Scraping websites
- Manually entering data
- Manually collecting private data
Database Compilation
After you’ve collected your data, you’ll need to compile it in a database and attach appropriate labels. These labels tell the tool what to do with your data. The best database tools allow you to easily sort, filter, and search data by criteria such as headings and page titles.
Page Template Creation
Once you’ve designed your template, it’s time to create it. You can do this either manually or by using a content management system (CMS).
If you opt for using a CMS, you’ll have to choose between using a basic or headless CMS. Here are the differences.
CMS
- Content is stored in content repositories and multiple CMSes
- You’ll have to enter content manually into the template
- Single digital touchpoint
Headless CMS
- Content is stored in unstructured buckets
- APIs deliver content to any channel
- Multiple digital touchpoints
Essentially, headless CMSes allow you to store all of your content in one convenient place, so it’s easier to manage and faster to deploy. A few headless CMSes include Contentful, Contentstack, and Sanity.
Database Integration
Now it’s time to integrate your database with your website. You can accomplish this with third-party integration tools such as Zapier, webhooks, or APIs. Once your database is set up, you’ll be able to quickly build pages for specific keywords.
Search Engine Optimization
So you’ve created your first pages; now what? It’s time to get them indexed and ranked by Google, so they’ll show up in the search results.
After implementing SEO, keep track of your page performance via Google Search Console. This tool allows you to see each page’s click-through rate, bounce rate, conversion rate, and much more.
Here are a few technical optimizations to focus on.
Structured Data Markup
Structured data markup involves providing explicit clues to help Google understand what your page is about. Adding structured data creates rich results, which encourage users to interact with your content more.
You could even have your content appear in a featured snippet at the top of the SERPs, which makes your HVAC business look like a trustworthy industry authority. Just imagine all the traffic you’d pull in!
Meta Tags
The meta tag is an HTML element that provides search engines with information about a page. You can use meta tags to influence how Google displays your pages in the SERPs.
Google supports many meta tags, the best-known of which is probably the meta description. This is a short description of your page that you can use to entice users to click and read more.
Other supported meta tags include:
- Robots: Controls how Google crawls and indexes your pages
- Refresh: Tells Google to redirect users to another page after a certain period of time
- Viewport: Controls how your page appears on mobile devices
Internal Linking
Internal links are links that lead to other sections of your website. Internal linking helps users find helpful content and easily navigate from one area of your site to the next.
Page Loading Speed
Users won’t wait around long for your pages to load. Poor loading times can increase your bounce rate, and lower the number of users who book your HVAC services. You can improve loading speed by optimizing your content and compressing large image files.
Site Testing
Once you’re done implementing your new pages, you can’t rest on your laurels. You’ll need to continually test your pages for duplicate pages, missing or broken links, and other problems that could hurt the user experience.
What To Watch Out for With Programmatically Created Pages
Programmatic SEO is a wonderful addition to your content marketing strategy, but there are a few pitfalls to watch out for.
Thin Content
Google hates thin content, and if your landing page is packed with it, expect your SERPs ranking to plummet. You should also avoid using doorway pages. Doorway pages are “cookie-cutter” pages created for search engines, not users. They employ black-hat tactics like keyword stuffing and usually contain very little helpful information.
Thankfully, it’s easy to avoid thin content. Just make sure that each page includes useful information that is of value to your users.
Duplicate Content
Avoid using the same or very similar content from one landing page to the next. To avoid a duplicate content penalty in the SERPs, make sure every page has unique content. For example, you could add a comments section to your blog posts, which will make your pages appear unique to the search engine.
Google Indexing Problems
If you add too many new pages at once, Google might have trouble indexing all of them, which means some may not appear in the SERPs. You can speed up indexing by adding plenty of useful links (both internal and external) and creating a strong site architecture. You can also manually submit your sitemap via Search Console.
Ready To Develop Your Programmatic SEO Strategy? Reach Out to Relentless Digital!
If you need a helping hand with programmatic SEO or want to learn strategies to get more HVAC customers, Relentless Digital is here for you. Our team offers SEO and web design services tailored to HVAC businesses like yours.
To get started, book your free strategy today!
