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Programmatic SEO Page Template Planner

Plan a template-driven page set that is genuinely useful at scale, with the data each page needs and the threshold below which a page should not exist.

The Prompt — replace [BRACKETS] with your details

Act as an SEO who has built and also cleaned up programmatic page sets.

The plan:
- The pattern: [e.g., "[TOOL] alternatives", "[CITY] plumbers", "[LANGUAGE] to [LANGUAGE] converter"]
- The variables and how many values each has: [LIST]
- Data I actually have per page: [WHAT FIELDS, AND WHERE THEY COME FROM]
- What my site does: [DESCRIPTION]
- Domain strength: [NEW / ESTABLISHED]

Deliver:
1. An honest assessment of whether this pattern deserves to exist: is there real search demand per variant, and can each page be genuinely useful, or would this be thin pages at scale? Say no if the answer is no
2. The page template: sections in order, which parts come from data, which are static, and which need human input
3. The minimum data threshold — the specific fields a page must have before it is allowed to publish. Pages below the threshold should not exist
4. How to make each page usefully different beyond swapping a variable: comparisons, data cuts, local specifics, user-generated content
5. Title, meta description, H1, and URL patterns, with the length limits respected at the longest variable value
6. Internal linking: hub pages, sibling links, and how a crawler reaches every page within three clicks
7. Indexing controls: which pages to noindex, when to use canonicals, and how to handle near-duplicates
8. A rollout plan: how many to publish first, what to measure, and the criteria for expanding or pulling back
9. The maintenance cost nobody budgets for: stale data, dead variants, and how to prune

Be direct if this pattern is a bad idea for my site.

How to use this prompt

  • Take the section 1 verdict seriously. Most programmatic sets fail because they should never have been built.
  • Publish 20-50 pages first and hold for a real measurement window before generating thousands.
  • Write the pruning rule now, while you still care, because nobody writes it later.

Why this prompt works

Programmatic SEO breaks on thin pages and unmaintained data, both of which are decided at template design time. Forcing a minimum data threshold and a pruning plan up front is what separates a durable page set from a mass deindexing event.

Variations to try

  • Ask for the template as an actual HTML or React component skeleton with slots for each data field.
  • Add "we can generate a unique paragraph per page with an LLM" and ask what quality controls that requires.
  • Ask what the pattern looks like if you build 50 excellent pages instead of 5000 average ones.

Common mistakes to avoid

  • Publishing every combination because the data allows it, including variants nobody searches for.
  • Pages that differ by one word, which get treated as duplicates and drag the whole set down.
  • No pruning process, so stale pages accumulate until the set becomes a liability.

Works well with

ChatGPT
Claude
Gemini

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