Programmatic vs Editorial SEO in an AEO world
You don’t need to choose programmatic OR editorial. You can do both.
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If you have read my book, you know I am a huge proponent of the outsized SEO opportunities that come from an effective programmatic SEO strategy, and that conviction has only gotten stronger now that the same logic applies to how brands show up inside an LLM response. Aside from the scaled results possible with programmatic SEO, it is also significantly more affordable than an editorial SEO strategy, because each new programmatic page adds only marginal cost while editorial content expenses scale linearly with every single piece you commission.
However, even with a great programmatic engine running, there is still a place for editorial SEO, and the reverse is just as true.
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Even when the ROI case for editorial is weak on its own, which I have made the argument for in past newsletters, there is still a reason to keep some editorial muscle in the system, because editorial is the raw foundation of AEO. Programmatic pages can capture a deep SEO query, but they cannot make a model trust your brand enough to cite it.
You don’t need to choose programmatic OR editorial. You can do both.
Programmatic SEO and editorial SEO are not opposing forces fighting for the same budget. They are complementary systems that, paired correctly, do more for your organic and AI visibility than either one does alone.
What is programmatic?
(Note: some refer to this is as pSEO as if it’s something new, it’s not. It’s just SEO.)
Programmatic SEO is about using data and automation to produce large volumes of targeted content built to catch specific, narrow queries that match real user intent. It is your net, cast wide across a sea of niche searches that no single writer could ever cover by hand. With a goal that ambitious, it is easy to slide into spam, so any programmatic effort has to start by validating the actual use case and confirming that someone needs what you are about to mass-produce. TripAdvisor, Amazon, and Zillow are all examples of programmatic SEO that is not spam.
Good programmatic SEO is never “set it and forget it.” It needs a solid data foundation that feeds something genuinely useful to the user, smart templating wrapped in design that does not feel like a template. Canva is right there in the middle of that with fantastic templates, but others push this too far. (Does anyone really need variations of a 27-year-old birthday card?)
In an AI world, there also needs to be a second filter: would a model want to summarize this page, or skip straight past it to a competitor with a cleaner answer? That question did not exist five years ago, and ignoring it is how good programmatic ideas quietly become invisible. Scaled pages with lead forms will be skipped, while custom pricing pages will be cited.
The upside of programmatic
Done right, programmatic SEO drives massive traffic gains. Done wrong, it is spam at scale, with a penalty waiting in the wings, ready to catch it at the next update. As an example, Bankrate’s dynamic mortgage pages are more unique than NerdWallet’s long-form credit card page. The former has a utility in an AEO world; the latter is replaced by AI responses.
The leaders in many of these spaces are doing it right, which is why they own the SERP, while the imitators in their respective spaces are not. ( I will not call any of them out by name here, but reply to this newsletter if you want that conversation.)
The cost of great programmatic SEO will always be higher than that of the lazy alternative, because the best implementations depend on proprietary data and real engineering support behind the scenes. Nobody builds a serious programmatic product with one SEO manager and a spreadsheet. It takes a PM with drive and a unique idea executing over months. Time and cost become a barrier to entry and the moat.
Editorial SEO
Editorial SEO is the opposite motion: targeted effort rather than a wide net. Content is long form and targeted at specific users. Editorial content has to be well-written and genuinely professional, not blog posts written for SEO.
Strong editorial reinforces your position as the source people in your category go to first. The problem with editorial has never changed: it does not scale. You cannot automate genuine long-form expertise, and every real piece costs money.
High-quality content can run well over a thousand dollars a piece, and even the lower-quality stuff still costs hundreds if it’s written by qualified writers. This means a $150,000 annual content budget only buys you less than 150 pieces in a good year.
AI-assisted writing can reduce costs, but there is still a huge time tax on the human side. A great writer produces only a handful of strong pieces per week, and across 47 to 50 working weeks a year, that ceiling does not move, no matter how much budget you throw at it. Wirecutter is the model for what editorial SEO looks like when it is done right, and the wave of AI-generated, low-quality competitors trying to copy that format is proof of what it looks like when it is done wrong.
Get the balance right
Here is where most people get the balance wrong. They treat programmatic and editorial like a choice you make once and live with forever. Agencies push editorial because that is the work they know how to deliver, and it is much harder for an outside agency to influence a programmatic system when the actual deliverable is building a product with an internal engineering team. Internal SEO leaders tend to swing the other way, pushing hard for programmatic, then losing their nerve the moment the project gets difficult, because getting buy-in for an expensive, multi-quarter SEO bet is one of the hardest internal sells in marketing.
Programmatic supplies volume and reach, and editorial supplies authority and brand weight. AEO sits atop both, serving as a layer that determines whether any of that volume or authority actually surfaces in an LLM's response.
Think about the user journey
Another way to see this split is through the user journey. Programmatic content tends to live higher in the funnel, while strong editorial does its best work lower down, closer to the decision. Weak editorial also ends up higher in the funnel if it's targeted only at Google rather than users.
Including AEO in the funnel math means editorial that's non-specific or authority-building will compete with AI Overviews and never generate a click. Programmatic content will always read as lower-quality than hand-written editorial, and the intent is spread across many small variations.
The survey template work I built at SurveyMonkey many years ago is a clean example of the high-quality end of that spectrum. The number of template categories that actually mattered to users was limited, so each one was written by a survey expert and treated with real care.
Zapier (see this post) sits at the other end entirely, building a software pairing page for every possible integration, where the upside lived entirely in coverage and breadth rather than in any individual page reading like a masterpiece. Nobody needed a thousand polished words explaining why Slack connects to Trello.
The real tiebreaker in programmatic or editorial is ROI, not personal preference or whichever approach feels more impressive in a board deck. Resource the strategy based on where the return actually shows up, and let that number, not a philosophical stance on content quality, decide where to invest. Programmatic without a user is just pages to nowhere.
Programmatic or editorial, neither is a silver bullet. Chase users and build what they need.
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