# Programmatic SEO Human Guide

## What This Is For
When the user wants to create SEO-driven pages at scale using templates and data. It gives the agent a clearer input/output frame for search and SEO workflows: what context to ask for, what decisions to make, and what usable artifact to return.

Use this as a human-readable version of the Programmatic SEO agent skill. It is meant for marketers, operators, founders, and other non-coders who want the workflow without reading agent-specific implementation instructions.

## When To Use This
- Use this when you need a repeatable process for programmatic SEO.
- Use this when the task needs judgment, examples, constraints, or a clear output format rather than a one-off prompt.
- Use this when you want to hand an AI assistant enough context to produce a usable marketing artifact.

## When Not To Use This
- Do not use this when you only need a quick factual answer.
- Do not use this when the work depends on private data you cannot share with the assistant.
- Do not use this as a replacement for legal, compliance, financial, or medical review.

## What You Need Before Starting
- The goal or business outcome you want.
- The audience, customer segment, or market context.
- Any source material the assistant should respect, such as notes, briefs, examples, URLs, or brand guidance.
- Constraints such as tone, length, channel, deadline, region, or approval requirements.
- A clear definition of what a good final answer should look like.

## Step-By-Step Workflow
1. State the job clearly: "Use the Programmatic SEO guide to help me with..."
2. Add context: audience, goal, offer, channel, source material, and constraints.
3. Ask the assistant to identify missing inputs before producing the final output.
4. Have the assistant follow the skill-specific guidance below.
5. Review the result against the final checklist and ask for revisions where needed.

## Skill-Specific Guidance
- What's the conversion goal for these pages?
- What's the search volume distribution?
- Who ranks for these terms now?
- What do their pages look like?
- What would it take to beat them?
- Unique data, insights, or combinations
- Not just swapped variables in a template
- Maximize unique content—the more differentiated, the better
- Avoid "thin content" penalties by adding real depth
- **Proprietary data**: Data you own or generate
- **Product-derived data**: Insights from your product usage
- **User-generated content**: Reviews, comments, submissions

## Decision Points And Nuance
The original skill emphasizes: Initial Assessment, Core Principles, Unique Value Per Page, Proprietary Data Wins, Clean URL Structure, Genuine Search Intent Match, Scalable Quality, Not Just Quantity, Avoid Google Penalties, The 12 Programmatic SEO Playbooks, Templates.

Use these questions to steer the work:
- What is the intended audience or buyer?
- What source material must be preserved?
- What should the assistant optimize for: clarity, persuasion, accuracy, speed, creativity, or conversion?
- What examples represent the desired quality bar?
- What should the assistant avoid?

## Common Mistakes
- You are an expert in programmatic SEO—building SEO-optimized pages at scale using templates and data. Your goal is to create pages that rank, provide value, and avoid thin content penalties.
- Every page must provide value specific to that page:
- Avoid "thin content" penalties by adding real depth
- Pages must actually answer what people are searching for:
- Don't over-optimize for keywords at expense of usefulness
- Quality standards must be maintained at scale
- 6. Avoid Google Penalties
- **Prioritize important pages**:

## Copy-And-Paste Prompt
```text
Use the Programmatic SEO human guide.

My goal:
[Describe the business outcome]

Audience:
[Describe who this is for]

Context and source material:
[Paste notes, examples, links, or existing copy]

Constraints:
[Tone, length, channel, timeline, must-include items, must-avoid items]

Before producing the final output, ask me for any missing information that would materially improve the result.
```

## Final Checklist
- [ ] The output matches the original goal.
- [ ] The audience and context are reflected in the answer.
- [ ] Important constraints and source material were preserved.
- [ ] The assistant made the relevant decisions explicit.
- [ ] The final artifact is ready to use, review, or hand to the next person.

## Source
This guide was generated from the aitytech/agentkits-marketing skill entry for `programmatic-seo`.

## Source Skill Notes
These notes preserve the nuance from the original skill. Use them as supporting reference when the workflow above feels too generic.

# Programmatic SEO

You are an expert in programmatic SEO—building SEO-optimized pages at scale using templates and data. Your goal is to create pages that rank, provide value, and avoid thin content penalties.

## Initial Assessment

Before designing a programmatic SEO strategy, understand:

1. **Business Context**
   - What's the product/service?
   - Who is the target audience?
   - What's the conversion goal for these pages?

2. **Opportunity Assessment**
   - What search patterns exist?
   - How many potential pages?
   - What's the search volume distribution?

3. **Competitive Landscape**
   - Who ranks for these terms now?
   - What do their pages look like?
   - What would it take to beat them?

---

## Core Principles

### 1. Unique Value Per Page
Every page must provide value specific to that page:
- Unique data, insights, or combinations
- Not just swapped variables in a template
- Maximize unique content—the more differentiated, the better
- Avoid "thin content" penalties by adding real depth

### 2. Proprietary Data Wins
The best pSEO uses data competitors can't easily replicate:
- **Proprietary data**: Data you own or generate
- **Product-derived data**: Insights from your product usage
- **User-generated content**: Reviews, comments, submissions
- **Aggregated insights**: Unique analysis of public data

Hierarchy of data defensibility:
1. Proprietary (you created it)
2. Product-derived (from your users)
3. User-generated (your community)
4. Licensed (exclusive access)
5. Public (anyone can use—weakest)

### 3. Clean URL Structure
**Always use subfolders, not subdomains**:
- Good: `yoursite.com/templates/resume/`
- Bad: `templates.yoursite.com/resume/`

Subfolders pass authority to your main domain. Subdomains are treated as separate sites by Google.

**URL best practices**:
- Short, descriptive, keyword-rich
- Consistent pattern across page type
- No unnecessary parameters
- Human-readable slugs

### 4. Genuine Search Intent Match
Pages must actually answer what people are searching for:
- Understand the intent behind each pattern
- Provide the complete answer
- Don't over-optimize for keywords at expense of usefulness

### 5. Scalable Quality, Not Just Quantity
- Quality standards must be maintained at scale
- Better to have 100 great pages than 10,000 thin ones
- Build quality checks into the process

### 6. Avoid Google Penalties
- No doorway pages (thin pages that just funnel to main site)
- No keyword stuffing
- No duplicate content across pages
- Genuine utility for users

---