| name | programmatic-seo-content-quality |
| description | Use when designing the content layer for programmatic SEO pages: avoiding thin content, deduplication, AI generation guardrails, E-E-A-T signals, and quality thresholds. Not for one-off blog editing or full template design (use programmatic-seo-pages). |
Programmatic SEO — content quality
Programmatic pages succeed or fail on whether each page deserves to exist on its own. Google's Helpful Content System actively penalizes thin, near-duplicate, doorway pages — and the penalty often hits the whole domain, not just the bad URLs.
Companion: programmatic-seo-pages, seo-meta-tags-spa, seo-structured-data.
The single rule
If a user landed on this URL and 9 nearly identical ones, would they find each useful?
If not, do not publish that row.
Per-page minimum bar
A programmatic page should have:
- ≥ 300 words of substantive, page-unique content.
- At least 3 unique data points (price, stat, testimonial, list item) that vary per row.
- At least 1 UGC or hand-curated element (review, FAQ answered by a human, local note).
- A reason a user would click your result over the existing top 3.
If you can't hit this for a row, leave it unpublished.
Data inputs — where uniqueness comes from
| Source | Example |
|---|
| Public datasets | Census stats, NOAA weather, Wikipedia openings |
| Your own data | Anonymized usage, top searches, customer outcomes |
| User-generated | Reviews, Q&A, before/after photos |
| Computed | "Compare X and Y on price, plan limits, ratings" |
| AI-augmented (with guardrails) | Summaries of UGC, opening paragraphs |
Mix at least three. A page built only from AI prose will read like every other AI page.
AI generation guardrails
If you use an LLM to draft prose:
- Feed it structured per-row facts in the prompt — never let it invent facts.
- Force a specific structure (intro, comparison table, 3 bullet pros/cons, 1 anecdote).
- Human review before
published = true. Even a 30-second skim catches hallucinations.
- Disclose AI if your audience or regulation requires it.
- Re-generate on a schedule with refreshed data — don't ship 2024 prices in 2026.
Deduplication
Run a similarity check across pages before launch:
select a.slug, b.slug, similarity(a.body, b.body) as sim
from public.location_pages a
cross join public.location_pages b
where a.slug < b.slug and similarity(a.body, b.body) > 0.80
order by sim desc;
(Use pg_trgm's similarity(); or compute embeddings + cosine if you need semantic dedup.)
Threshold: kill or merge any pair with > 0.85 prose similarity.
E-E-A-T signals
Show Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness:
- Author byline with photo, role, link to bio.
datePublished + dateModified visible and accurate (see seo-structured-data).- Citations for facts: link to the source.
- Reviews / testimonials with names, dates, optional verification.
- Contact / legal pages linked from footer (not orphaned).
Quality gates before publishing
Block published = true until each row passes:
Enforce with a server check, not "the team will remember".
Pruning
After 90 days in production:
- Identify pages with zero clicks + zero impressions (Search Console).
- Set
noindex = true and remove from sitemap.
- After 180 days with no recovery, set
published = false and 301 redirect to the parent hub.
This is the most important habit in programmatic SEO: cut what doesn't work.
Avoid
- Shipping 5,000 rows on launch day. Start with 100 best; expand by 100/week.
- Identical headline structure ("Best X in Y") with nothing else unique.
- Auto-translated content without native review.
- Stuffing locations into a single page (
Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, …) hoping one ranks.
- Using AI to invent reviews or testimonials (illegal in many jurisdictions; always against Google guidelines).
Checklist
