The Three Types of SEO
Programmatic, editorial and technical SEO are different games; pick the one your queries reward.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 90%
SEO splits into three distinct disciplines: programmatic (pages auto-generated from a database), editorial (human-written articles, guides, listicles), and technical (internal link architecture, redirects, page speed). Most companies over-index on technical and under-invest in editorial. Which type to prioritize depends on the page type that maps to your target queries.
Origin
Ethan Smith's taxonomy from a career spanning programmatic SEO (early e-commerce, Thumbtack) and editorial SEO (MasterClass, BetterUp) at Graphite.
Core principles
- 01Technical SEO is infrastructure, not a growth engine
- 02Programmatic pages cost nothing per page; editorial pages each cost money
- 03Editorial SEO is always an opportunity if there's an addressable market; programmatic only sometimes
- 04The right type is dictated by which page type ranks for your queries, not preference
How to run it
- 1
Classify the discipline
Programmatic = category pages (grids/lists of items) and item pages (a single product, home, or video) auto-generated from a database. Editorial = human-written articles, guides, listicles. Technical = internal links, tags, redirects, page speed that support both.
Watch out A 'technical audit' (screaming frog bug list) is not a growth strategy; companies asking for one usually actually want to grow.
- 2
Match page type to your queries
Search your target keywords and see what page type ranks. For Zillow it's programmatic address pages; for MasterClass it's editorial articles. Build the type Google is already rewarding.
Watch out Zillow-style transcript or chapter pages won't rank if Google is ranking articles for those queries; the page type is simply wrong.
- 3
Default to editorial unless commerce/UGC
For most companies editorial is the best route. Choose programmatic when you have large SKU counts (eBay) or UGC (Glassdoor) that make per-page cost effectively zero.
Pro tip Programmatic's advantage is you don't pay to create each page; editorial's every page has a cost.
In the wild
MasterClass's addressable market is mostly how-to articles, so a chapter page that just transcribes what Gordon Ramsay said won't rank. Zillow's market is address pages generated programmatically from its database.
→ Same discipline (SEO), opposite build: MasterClass invests in editorial, Zillow in programmatic.
Common mistakes
Over-indexing on technical SEO
Treating SEO as a backlog of crawl-bugs to fix ignores that growth comes from programmatic and editorial content; the site stays flat while 'audits' get done.
Building the wrong page type for the query
Publishing transcript or product pages when Google ranks articles for those terms means zero ranking no matter how good the content is.
Is it for you?
Best for
Growth leaders deciding where to point SEO investment based on their catalog, UGC, and query landscape
Not ideal for
Teams that have already validated a single page type is working and just need to scale it
From the transcript
“there's programmatic SEO there's editorial SEO and then there's”
“programmatic SEO our pages that are automatically generated from a database of information”
“editorial seos where a person actually sat down and wrote a piece of content”
“editorial SEO is usually the best but it depends on your category”
“editorial SEO every page has a cost”
From the episode
The ultimate guide to SEO
Ethan Smith (Graphite)