24 Programmatic SEO Templates CEOs Used to Add 50k Leads

In this article, you will discover how top software CEOs are using Programmatic SEO to generate millions of new, free clicks from Google, leading to explosive user growth and revenue. We’ll break down the exact playbooks used by companies who have successfully scaled their content creation to dominate long-tail search results. You’ll get a 4-part playbook to launch your own Programmatic SEO strategy, along with over 40 case studies you can use as inspiration. These examples are from top Founders like Madhav Bhandari at Storylane, Eric Siu at Single Grain, and Ross Buhrdorf at ZenBusiness, who have used these tactics to build companies with combined revenues in the hundreds of millions.

The 4-Part Playbook For Programmatic SEO

1. Find Your Keyword Pattern: The foundation of programmatic SEO is identifying a keyword structure you can scale. This involves finding a “head term” (like “LLC”) and a “modifier” (like a location or competitor). The goal is to find patterns your customers use that map to a dataset you have. For example, Storylane, a demo automation platform, targeted keywords like “how to create a custom field in Salesforce” because their ideal customers (sales and marketing teams) search for those terms.
2. Build Your Data Source: Once you have a keyword pattern, you need a structured database of modifiers to create pages at scale. This data can be anything from a list of all US cities and states, a database of every app you integrate with, or a collection of user-generated content. ZenBusiness used a list of all US states and major cities as their data source to pair with their head term “LLC,” allowing them to generate thousands of location-specific pages.
3. Create a Page Template: Design a high-quality, reusable page template that will be programmatically filled with your data. This template should provide real value and be more than just spammy, auto-generated text. A good template interweaves static, valuable content with the unique data points for each page. For example, a template for “[Competitor] Alternative” could include a consistent section on “What to look for in an alternative” alongside dynamically populated features of the specific competitor.
4. Publish, Link, and Scale: With your template and data, you can now automate the creation of hundreds or thousands of pages. As you publish, create a smart internal linking structure. A common strategy is a “hub and spoke” model, where you create a primary page (the hub) like “Best CRM Alternatives” that links out to all the individual competitor pages (the spokes). This helps distribute SEO authority across your new pages and signals to Google how your content is related.

40+ Examples of Programmatic SEO in Action

• Madhav Bhandari of Storylane shared how they grew from 25,000 to over 200,000 monthly visitors in just a few months. They programmatically created over 1,500 demo-led tutorial pages for long-tail keywords like “how to create a custom field in Salesforce,” doubling their PLG revenue and closing enterprise deals.
• ZenBusiness’s founder, Ross Buhrdorf, implemented programmatic SEO by taking his successful “LLC” landing page and multiplying it by geographic locations. This strategy created 50,000 unique pages like “LLC Florida” and “LLC Texas,” driving massive organic traffic and helping the company grow rapidly.
• Shiyam Sunder from TripleDart explained how his agency uses programmatic SEO for clients like Multiplier, a global payroll company. They created a “country encyclopedia” with pages for every country’s “work permit” and “employment guides,” generating thousands of new visitors.
• Eric Siu of Single Grain highlighted programmatic SEO as a key growth lever, explaining how his agency ranks for over 4,000 “agency” related keywords by creating pages with permutations like “SEO agency in Los Angeles” or “Creative agency in New York.”
• The team at Grammarly executed a brilliant programmatic SEO strategy by creating hundreds of landing pages that answered common grammar questions. By targeting terms like “no one vs no one,” they captured users in their moment of need and introduced them to their product.
• Nathan Latka used programmatic SEO to scale GetLatka.com by taking audio data from over 3,000 podcast interviews and creating a database of 30,000 software companies. The site ranks for “[Company Name] + Revenue,” generating over 1.17 million free clicks from Google and driving the project to $60,000 a month in revenue.
• ClickUp’s CEO Zeb Evans systematically creates “replaces [competitor]” landing pages about three months after every major acquisition in the productivity space. This programmatic approach capitalizes on the search volume from users looking for alternatives after an acquisition often leads to price increases.
• The team behind a survival site that drives $3 million a year in affiliate revenue generates 20 million annual visits by publishing 11 articles a week, 50% of which are programmatic refreshes of existing content to maintain and boost rankings.
• Mark Michael, CEO of DevHub and RallyMind, runs a platform that enables brands to launch 10,000 to 60,000 landing pages at scale. A cruise line client used the platform to roll out 400 port-specific pages for their SEO and SEM campaigns, helping them reach over $2 million in revenue.
• John Doherty of Credo blew out his site’s taxonomy to create 6,500 programmatic pages targeting hyper-specific, long-tail keywords like “B2B Healthcare SaaS marketing companies.” These pages see conversion rates of 30-50% and helped him generate $250 million in leads.
• Sridhar Ramaswamy at Factors.ai, a LinkedIn ABM platform, created a free programmatic tool called the “LinkedIn Advisor.” Users enter their competitors, and the tool generates a report on their ad copy and value propositions, which has resulted in over 200 signups.
• Lucjan Suski from Surfer SEO detailed how his company used programmatic SEO to compete with giants like Ahrefs and Semrush. They focused on creating pages at scale for keyword permutations such as “SEO agency in Los Angeles” to gain a foothold in a competitive market on their way to $15M in ARR.
• Sean Ellis, the founder of GrowthHackers.com, utilized a programmatic approach by creating content that addressed every step of the viral loop, from the initial prompt to the share invitation and landing page, which was a key strategy in growing Dropbox.
• The team at Tally, a form builder, programmatically reached out to thousands of Product Hunt users who had upvoted similar tools. This manual-programmatic hybrid approach helped them find their first users and grow in a competitive space, eventually reaching over $600k in ARR.
• Alex from TechTpon built a marketplace for SaaS companies that now generates 24,700 organic hits per month. He uses a “social hacking” method where companies listing their software create SEO content for him, resulting in 150 new content pieces monthly and 9,000 monthly marketing qualified leads for his vendors.
• Karsten Rendemann of Cookie Information grew his company by becoming a subject matter expert and publishing definitive guides on privacy regulations. This programmatic approach to thought leadership helped him dominate a niche and lead to a $50 million secondary transaction.
• Antoine Pereira at DashThis, a reporting tool doing $4.2M in ARR, focused their SEO efforts on creating pillar content around specific keywords related to marketing reports (e.g., “Facebook reporting,” “SEO reporting”), which helped them scale to 2,600 customers.
• The founder of GoPBN, a tool for managing private blog networks, grew to $70k MRR in just six months by creating a large volume of programmatic content around SEO topics and then using targeted Facebook ads to amplify it.
• Andrew Geisel of Planleave, a leave management tool, is focusing his go-to-market strategy on programmatic SEO by targeting long-tail keywords like “vacation tracker” and “time off tracker,” which he identified as less competitive than broad terms like “HR software.”
• Atul of Plobal Apps, a Shopify app builder doing over $54k MRR, gets 40% of his traffic from programmatic SEO. His team ranks number one on Google for “Shopify mobile app” by creating in-depth content and guides for non-technical e-commerce merchants.
• Nick Bjorn from Power Digital Marketing, an agency that hit $6M in revenue, uses tools like MarketMuse to programmatically topic model keywords for clients like Soccer Loco. They create content ecosystems around terms like “cheap soccer cleats” to dominate search rankings.
• Eugene Levin from SEMrush explained that a key to their growth past a $64M run rate was scaling their content marketing programmatically across different geographies, creating localized content for European and other international markets.
• Jimmy at MegaLeads.com, a lead database doing $1.8M in revenue, focuses his SEO strategy on rotating around keywords like “business leads” and “sales leads” and programmatically creates pages with action word iterations like “buy” and “purchase” to capture high-intent traffic.
• Todd Olson at Pendo, a product experience platform that hit a $1.2M MRR, uses programmatic SEO to target different business types, moving beyond tech companies into financial services, insurance, and retail to expand their market reach.
• Steve Pockross from Verblio, a content creation marketplace doing over $12M in revenue, focuses on creating content that is a “master of niches.” This programmatic approach allows them to create high-quality, specialized content at scale to compete in SEO.
• Garrett Mehrguth of Direct Consulting helps software companies scale by moving beyond simple keyword targeting. His programmatic approach involves creating content and ads tailored to specific firmographics and personas, not just search intent.
• Armando Biondi, founder of AdEspresso, grew his company to a $5M+ run rate before being acquired by creating a massive volume of SEO content. This programmatic strategy generated nearly 400,000 monthly unique visitors in three years.
• Paul Lynch at Assembla, a source code management tool, uses programmatic SEO to target enterprise clients with specific compliance and security needs. They create content around standards like SOC 2 and GDPR to attract high-value customers.
• The team at Eventbrite leverages a natural programmatic loop. Event organizers create event pages (content), which are discovered by attendees. Some of those attendees are future event organizers who then discover Eventbrite, creating a self-sustaining growth engine.
• Ricky Robinson at Shorthand, a visual storytelling platform with a $1.5M run rate, found that 30-40% of their new customers come from the “powered by Shorthand” logo on stories created by their users. This user-generated content acts as a programmatic discovery channel.
• Adam Sandman’s company, Inflectra, which is bootstrapped to nearly $10M in ARR, uses paid search data to inform their programmatic SEO strategy. They identify profitable and low-competition keywords from AdWords and then build organic content around them.
• The team at Power Up Hosting, which hit a seven-figure run rate, used a programmatic content strategy combined with workshops to acquire their first 6,500 SEO customers before launching their new SaaS product.
• Josh Newman’s company, Clatter, which hit $600k in ARR with one employee, plans to scale new customer acquisition through programmatic SEO and by creating content for agency partners.
• Kevin Yoon, co-founder of GrowSurf, a referral software tool doing $26k MRR, has focused on a programmatic content strategy. Their content on building referral programs has been a key driver of their bootstrapped growth.
• A web developer named John utilized a programmatic SEO strategy for his marketplace by creating listicles like “Top 31 SaaS Marketing Agencies.” This approach helped him rank for numerous long-tail keywords, driving significant traffic and leads.
• Jacob Vikstrom of Mobal grew his business listing management SaaS from $35k/mo to $120k/mo by focusing on programmatic SEO. He built his initial tool to manually update listings, then scaled it into a SaaS platform that automates the process for thousands of locations.
• Jurg Bender, founder of Prepper, an Instagram scheduling tool, grew to a $3M run rate by focusing on a programmatic SEO content strategy. They created numerous articles targeting keywords like “best time to post on Instagram” to attract users organically.
• Bryn Jones from GrowSumo uses a programmatic web scraper to identify influencers with large followings on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. This data-driven approach allows them to automatically identify potential partners for their customers’ influencer programs.
• Andrea Volpini, CEO of WordLift, grew his SEO tool to a $1M run rate by building an automated system that analyzes a website’s content and creates a knowledge graph. This graph is then used to programmatically generate structured data to help Google better understand and rank the content.
• Vaibhav Kakkar of RankWatch grew his SEO tool to $180k MRR by focusing on programmatic content. His team created an infographic on the “future of SEO” that interviewed top experts, which helped them rank for competitive terms and drive thousands of new customers.
• Grant Deken from Unstack, a no-code CMS, grew to $10k MRR by programmatically creating content around long-tail keywords. Their post on “best B2B SaaS websites” was a top performer, driving new signups by targeting their ideal customer profile.
• Anne-Laure Le Cunff of Ness Labs reached 1,500 members and a $75k run rate for her membership site by programmatically creating neuroscience-based content. She writes articles targeting specific long-tail keywords like “Stygian blue” and “life lessons,” which drive a consistent flow of organic traffic.
• Ricardo at Betterpic, an AI headshot tool that hit a $3.2M run rate in 18 months, uses a programmatic SEO strategy by creating free tools that rank for high-volume keywords. His “free AI headshot generator” captures 400-500 users daily and serves as a powerful top-of-funnel for his paid product.
• Stanislav Dimitrov, CEO of NightEye, a dark mode browser extension, acquired 100,000 users almost purely from programmatic SEO. His team researched keywords like “Facebook dark mode” and “Amazon dark mode” and then outsourced the creation of hundreds of articles to rank for these terms, ultimately converting 4,500 of them to paying customers.
• Ivan Smolnikov, CEO of Smartcat, a translation platform doing $24M in ARR, attracts both supply (translators) and demand (customers) by offering a powerful, free translation workflow technology. This creates a programmatic loop where the tool’s value generates its own user base for the marketplace.

Conclusion

You’ve just learned the 4-part playbook for Programmatic SEO and seen over 40 real-world examples from SaaS founders who have used it to add millions in revenue. By identifying scalable keyword patterns, building data sources, creating templates, and publishing at scale, you can create a powerful, free user acquisition channel that your competitors can’t easily replicate. To get started building your own growth engine with non-dilutive capital, check out how Founderpath can help you invest in these strategies without giving up equity.

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