Programmatic SEO without thin content: a 7-point checklist

Programmatic SEO can put thousands of useful pages in front of searchers — or get a whole site devalued. The difference is whether each page earns its place. Before you generate a single URL, check these: 1. One real search intent per page. If two pages would answer the same query, merge them. 2. Unique data, not swapped city names. Every page needs something only it has: local numbers, listings, prices, FAQs specific to that place. 3. A template people would read. Write the first page by hand. If it isn't good enough to rank on its own, a thousand copies won't be either. 4. Internal links that make sense. Parent → child → siblings, plus breadcrumbs. Orphan pages rarely get crawled. 5. Index only what's ready. Keep drafts and empty pages noindex and out of the sitemap. 6. A sitemap split into shards under 50,000 URLs each, with honest lastmod dates. 7. Watch crawl stats, not just rankings. If Google crawls but doesn't index, the pages aren't different enough yet. What's the biggest programmatic SEO project you've shipped, and what would you do differently?