Project B: 5,000+ Programmatic Pages
A simulated programmatic SEO system generating thousands of high-quality, intent-aligned pages with unique value, fast rendering, and safe crawl controls.
Jump to Proof of Work ↓Highlights
Pages Generated5,000+
IndexationControlled via sitemaps & canonicals
PerformanceStatic generation + edge caching
Architecture
- Static site generator with templates and content sources
- Facet-safe URL design; canonicalization strategy
- Structured data per template (JSON-LD)
- Automated sitemaps and health checks
Controls & Quality
- Human-in-the-loop review queue for seed data
- Deduplication, thresholding, and quality gates
- Rate-limited discovery to respect crawl budget
- Content freshness jobs and invalidation
Executive Summary
This demo shows how to safely launch a programmatic SEO system at scale. The design emphasizes unique value per page, strict crawl/index controls, and high performance so the project scales without thin content or crawl-budget failures.
Context
Programmatic SEO is easy to get wrong. The point isn’t “5,000 pages,” it’s “5,000 pages with a reason to exist.” This demo treats scale as a constraint, not a goal.
What broke (and how I fixed it)
- Duplicate content clusters: introduced shingles-based similarity checks and canonical rules.
- Facet crawl traps: moved facets to params; canonicalized to base entities; robots rules for traps.
- Template bloat: enforced a performance budget per template; trimmed unused JS/CSS.
Tradeoffs
- Slower rollout in exchange for clean index coverage.
- Hard limits on page generation until quality gates are green.
If I had two more weeks
- Add human review workflows for long-tail categories.
- Integrate field data feedback loop to demote poor performers.
- Publish an internal “what not to index” playbook.
System Architecture
Content Sources (DB/CSV/APIs)
└─ Validation + Enrichment (LLM optional)
└─ Review Queue (HITL)
└─ Template Engine
├─ Pages (SSG) ───────▶ CDN Edge (immutable)
├─ JSON-LD per template
└─ Sitemaps (sharded)
Control Plane
├─ Quality gates (dedupe, thresholds)
├─ Canonicalization rules
└─ Rate limiter for discovery
Observability
├─ Index coverage tracking
├─ Crawl anomalies alerts
└─ Performance budgets per template
URL & Canonical Strategy
- Human-readable slugs with stable identifiers
- Facets in query params; canonical to base entity page
- Pagination pages canonicalize to primary listing when appropriate
- Parameter rules in Search Console for non-SEO params
Structured Data Templates
| Template | Schema Types | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Entity Detail | Article, BreadcrumbList | Eligibility for rich results; navigation clarity |
| Category / List | ItemList, BreadcrumbList | List context; entity discovery |
| Product-like | Product, Offer, AggregateRating | Commerce-style entities when relevant |
Indexation Controls
- Sitemap sharding (e.g., 50 × 100 URLs) with lastmod
- noindex for low-quality or incomplete entities
- robots.txt to disallow crawl traps
- Soft 404 detection and auto-removal from sitemaps
Quality & Uniqueness
- Similarity checks (shingles, cosine) to prevent near-duplicates
- Minimum content thresholds and signals of value (e.g., data points, visuals)
- Human-in-the-loop review for new templates and edge cases
- Content freshness strategy; scheduled revalidation
Rollout Plan
| Week | Actions | Guardrails |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Seed 100–200 pages | Manual QA; logs and sitemap verification |
| 2–3 | Scale to 1k pages | Monitor index coverage; tune rate limits |
| 4–6 | Scale to 5k+ | Quality checks; prune underperformers |
Proof of Work
This is a demonstration. Artifacts simulate real deliverables to showcase capability.
Template JSON-LD
- Organization + BreadcrumbList
- Product / Article variants per template
- Validation via structured data testing
Sitemaps Strategy
- Index splitting: 50 sitemaps × 100 URLs
- Lastmod stamping per deployment
- Monitoring: orphan detection and 404 sweeps
Quality Controls
- Similarity checks to avoid duplication
- Manual spot checks weekly
- Performance budgets on templates
Canonicalization Rules (Example)
/widgets/{slug}?sort=price → canonical: /widgets/{slug}
/widgets/{slug}?utm=... → canonical: /widgets/{slug}
/widgets/{slug}?page=2 → canonical: /widgets/{slug} (when appropriate)