---
name: seo-programmatic
description: "Plan and audit programmatic SEO pages generated at scale from structured data. Use when designing templates, URL systems, internal linking, quality gates, and index-bloat safeguards for pages at scale."
risk: critical
source: "https://github.com/AgriciDaniel/claude-seo"
date_added: "2026-03-21"
user-invokable: true
argument-hint: "[url or plan]"
allowed-tools:
  - Read
  - Grep
  - Glob
  - Bash
  - WebFetch
  - Write
---

# Programmatic SEO Analysis & Planning

Build and audit SEO pages generated at scale from structured data sources.
Enforces quality gates to prevent thin content penalties and index bloat.

## When to Use
- Use when the user wants programmatic SEO planning or review.
- Use when designing templates, data-driven pages, or scalable URL systems.
- Use when preventing thin content and index bloat across large page sets.

## Data Source Assessment

Evaluate the data powering programmatic pages:
- **CSV/JSON files**: Row count, column uniqueness, missing values
- **API endpoints**: Response structure, data freshness, rate limits
- **Database queries**: Record count, field completeness, update frequency
- Data quality checks:
  - Each record must have enough unique attributes to generate distinct content
  - Flag duplicate or near-duplicate records (>80% field overlap)
  - Verify data freshness; stale data produces stale pages

## Template Engine Planning

Design templates that produce unique, valuable pages:
- **Variable injection points**: Title, H1, body sections, meta description, schema
- **Content blocks**: Static (shared across pages) vs dynamic (unique per page)
- **Conditional logic**: Show/hide sections based on data availability
- **Supplementary content**: Related items, contextual tips, user-generated content
- Template review checklist:
  - Each page must read as a standalone, valuable resource
  - No "mad-libs" patterns (just swapping city/product names in identical text)
  - Dynamic sections must add genuine information, not just keyword variations

## URL Pattern Strategy

### Common Patterns
- `/tools/[tool-name]`: Tool/product directory pages
- `/[city]/[service]`: Location + service pages
- `/integrations/[platform]`: Integration landing pages
- `/glossary/[term]`: Definition/reference pages
- `/templates/[template-name]`: Downloadable template pages

### URL Rules
- Lowercase, hyphenated slugs derived from data
- Logical hierarchy reflecting site architecture
- No duplicate slugs; enforce uniqueness at generation time
- Keep URLs under 100 characters
- No query parameters for primary content URLs
- Consistent trailing slash usage (match existing site pattern)

## Internal Linking Automation

- **Hub/spoke model**: Category hub pages linking to individual programmatic pages
- **Related items**: Auto-link to 3-5 related pages based on data attributes
- **Breadcrumbs**: Generate BreadcrumbList schema from URL hierarchy
- **Cross-linking**: Link between programmatic pages sharing attributes (same category, same city, same feature)
- **Anchor text**: Use descriptive, varied anchor text. Avoid exact-match keyword repetition
- Link density: 3-5 internal links per 1000 words (match seo-content guidelines)

## Thin Content Safeguards

### Quality Gates

Assess whether each page supplies useful, accurate information for a distinct user need. Word count and unique-word percentages do not establish quality or a Google penalty threshold. Document any editorial rollout limits as project policy, not search-engine rules. Review representative template/data edge cases and every high-risk page; disclose the reviewed scope and expand cautiously based on observed indexing and user outcomes. Scaled content abuse concerns producing many pages primarily to manipulate rankings without helping users, regardless of generation method.

### Safe Programmatic Pages (OK at scale)
✅ Integration pages (with real setup docs, API details, screenshots)
✅ Template/tool pages (with downloadable content, usage instructions)
✅ Glossary pages (200+ word definitions with examples, related terms)
✅ Product pages (unique specs, reviews, comparison data)
✅ Data-driven pages (unique statistics, charts, analysis per record)

### Penalty Risk (avoid at scale)
❌ Location pages with only city name swapped in identical text
❌ "Best [tool] for [industry]" without industry-specific value
❌ "[Competitor] alternative" without real comparison data
❌ AI-generated pages without human review and unique value-add
❌ Pages whose shared boilerplate leaves no useful distinct information

### Uniqueness Calculation
Unique content % = (words unique to this page) / (total words on page) × 100

Measure against all other pages in the programmatic set. Shared headers, footers, and navigation are excluded from the calculation. Template boilerplate text IS included.

## Canonical Strategy

- Every programmatic page must have a self-referencing canonical tag
- Canonicalize parameter variations only when they are genuinely duplicate; distinct pagination is not a duplicate of page 1
- Paginated pages normally use their own canonical URLs; Google no longer uses rel=next/prev as an indexing signal
- If programmatic pages overlap with manual pages, the manual page is canonical
- No canonical to a different domain unless intentional cross-domain setup

## Sitemap Integration

- Auto-generate sitemap entries for all programmatic pages
- Split at 50,000 URLs per sitemap file (protocol limit)
- Use sitemap index if multiple sitemap files needed
- `<lastmod>` reflects actual data update timestamp (not generation time)
- Exclude noindexed programmatic pages from sitemap
- Register sitemap in robots.txt
- Update sitemap dynamically as new records are added to data source

## Index Bloat Prevention

- **Noindex low-value pages**: Pages that don't meet quality gates
- **Pagination**: Keep useful paginated results crawlable and self-canonical; blanket noindex can impair discovery
- **Faceted navigation**: Noindex filtered views, canonical to base category
- **Crawl budget**: For sites with >10k programmatic pages, monitor crawl stats in Search Console
- **Thin page consolidation**: Merge records with insufficient data into aggregated pages
- **Regular audits**: Monthly review of indexed page count vs intended count

## Output

Scores are qualitative editorial aids, not validated ranking/penalty predictions. URL length and link-density figures above are house heuristics, not Google requirements.

### Programmatic SEO Score: XX/100

### Assessment Summary
| Category | Status | Score |
|----------|--------|-------|
| Data Quality | ✅/⚠️/❌ | XX/100 |
| Template Uniqueness | ✅/⚠️/❌ | XX/100 |
| URL Structure | ✅/⚠️/❌ | XX/100 |
| Internal Linking | ✅/⚠️/❌ | XX/100 |
| Thin Content Risk | ✅/⚠️/❌ | XX/100 |
| Index Management | ✅/⚠️/❌ | XX/100 |

### Critical Issues (fix immediately)
### High Priority (fix within 1 week)
### Medium Priority (fix within 1 month)
### Low Priority (backlog)

### Recommendations
- Data source improvements
- Template modifications
- URL pattern adjustments
- Quality gate compliance actions

## Error Handling

| Scenario | Action |
|----------|--------|
| URL unreachable | Report connection error with status code. Suggest verifying URL accessibility and checking for authentication requirements. |
| No programmatic pages detected | Inform user that no template-generated or data-driven page patterns were found. Suggest checking if pages use client-side rendering or if the URL points to the correct section. |
| Suspected low-value content | Report concrete missing value and affected pages; propose consolidation or improvement. |
| Unclear publication scope | Continue analysis; obtain authorization before publishing or bulk-changing live pages. |

## Example

**User request:**

> Plan and audit programmatic SEO pages generated at scale from structured data.

## Limitations
- Use this skill only when the task clearly matches the scope described above.
- Do not treat the output as a substitute for environment-specific validation, testing, or expert review.
- Stop and ask for clarification if required inputs, permissions, safety boundaries, or success criteria are missing.