Yes, you can grow a startup with 0 followers and $0.
This is how I get 300 visitors a day from Google, for free, using programmatic SEO ↓
1/ What’s Programmatic SEO (pSEO)?
pSEO is a marketing strategy to rank on Google for a group of long-tail keywords related to 1 main keyword.
You use code to build a skeleton. And you fill it with content, usually generated programmatically too.
That’s how I got:
• 15,600 visitors on BooksCalculator.com
• 9,000 visitors on GamifyList.com
• 4,500 visitors on WorkbookPDF WorkbookPDF.com
2/ Find 1 keyword
Let’s use a real example.
Our business is a directory of rage rooms — like TripAdvisor — to help people find the best place to smash away stress.
The business model?
1. Get traffic on autopilot
2. Show ads and profit
3. Move to Bali
Let’s skip the last part and focus on getting traffic with pSEO.
First, you need 1 keyword with:
• Keyword Difficulty (KD) lower than 20. It requires 10 backlinks or less required to rank on Google
• Search volume superior to 500 per month in 1 country (3x this for worldwide searches)
Ahref's free keyword generator tool shows that.
The keyword “rage room” is perfect.
(KD is a bit high for a start, it's an example)
Second, we need 10+ long-tail keywords.
There’s a high volume for “rage rooms in [city]” and a low KD. Let’s build for these keywords.
3/ Build a webpage empire
We want to create 1 webpage per long tail keyword.
There are 333 cities with over 100,000 people in the USA. Let’s assume there are 1000 rage rooms (random guess).
Here’s what our website structure looks like:
/ → main welcome page (1 webpage)
/[city] / → all rage rooms in [city] (1 skeleton, 333 webpages)
/rage-room/[rage room name] → a rage room page (1 skeleton, 1000 webpages)
a. Create a skeleton
A skeleton is an HTML mold. Add some data, and you have a unique webpage.
My product WorkbookPDF has 1 skeleton for 25 pages:
workbookpdf(dot)com/free/[language]
The skeleton for our /[city] route would look like this:
• H1: “The [total] best rage rooms in [city]”
• Description: “Explore [city]’s top rage rooms! Find the perfect spot to smash away stress and have a blast. From [district_1] to [district_2], we've got you covered.”
We want to build as many valuable pages as possible. Pretend you’re searching for a rage room in New York. What do you want to see?
• The list of rage rooms, sorted by Google Maps stars
• The price per hour and the type of objects you can break
• A button to book a rage room
The list goes on. Search for patterns while crafting the experience of the end-user.
By building 3 HTML skeletons, we can have 1334 web pages ranking on Google.
My site BooksCalculator has 100+ pages ranking for “How long to read [pages_number]?”
b. Collect good data
We need rich data to build valuable web pages and rank on Google. For example:
• 333 cities
• City name
• City photo
• Popular districts
• 1000 rages rooms
• Business name
• Starting price
• Reviews
Most of our data could be obtained using Google Maps API.
To get richer data, outsource the data collection for a few hundred dollars and/or use ChatGPT for some parts, like the meta description.
For GamifyList, I spent $150 to collect the best 600 gamification apps from a VA
c. Optimize your SEO
Once you have 1334 webpages built with your skeleton and the data, make them SEO-friendly
• The long tail keyword should be in the title and <h1> tags, at least
• The images should have an alt text, good size, and lazy loaded
• Links should have titles
Google Chrome Lighthouse is your best friend.
Optimize for the long tail keywords, and add them at different strategic locations.
Don’t stuff keywords though. Only add them where it matters for users.
3. Rank on Google
We need around 10 backlinks to start ranking on Google.
a. Launch
The easiest way to start is to launch on Product Hunt which gives you a follow link, regardless of the upvotes. Nice!
Platforms like Hacker News, Twitter & Reddit work too. It’s a nofollow link, but people might reshare the website in their newsletter or blog.
b. Buy Backlinks
If you’re serious about the project, investing in backlinks is a great way to kickstart the ranking.
You can either purchase a listing in popular directories, like TIAAFT by @imakecoolsites, or buy a listing of sites to submit yours, like BACKL from @philkellr
c. Submit to Search Console
Verify your domain name in the Google Search Console.
Then manually request for a few page indexing. It makes Google index your website faster.
Search for a URL and click “Request Indexing”
Now, wait. Indexing is fast, but ranking for keywords takes 3 to 6 months.
You will get traffic from Google on autopilot, for free. Monetize it with a product or ads and you make money when you sleep.
If you’re a developer who loves coding too much (like me) check out my guide about growing a startup with free tools marketing.
marclou.beehiiv.com/p/marketing-for-product-obsessed-developers.
Thanks to @dannypostmaa who taught me everything about pSEO. My article is a wrapper around his knowledge.
Thanks to @illyism who kickstarted the SEO for WorkbookPDF.
twitter.com/dannypostmaa/status/1646368426246680579