Simplifying Big Idea & Keeping High SEO Value

[TheDonk]

So I've got a huge project I'm working on with a great partner. I'm a big fan of the 4 Hour Work Week and trying to break this down into simple, ultra fast ways to get things done. If you like solving riddles, this one is for you. I'm looking for any and all ideas anyone has. Even if I can't use a certain idea just the way you've explained it, maybe I can find a way to make it work and save us boatloads of time.

The site needs 4100 pages to get it officially started (that's when we consider it ready to go). There will be 100 cities targeted, with 41 product pages targeting each city. So, 41 pages will use the product term, and it's city term. So, essentially only two major differences between each page.

This means that 100 pages will target the same product, x's 41 products = 4100 pages.

First Challenge:

To create the page titles, title tags, meta data, & url's I was thinking about writing either 20 or 40 individual templates, then changing out the city and product names on each. So, it would be copy/paste, change out a few words, save the page...4100 times.

Now, I 'may' have a guy to help us do that, but that's besides the point atm.

Here's the thing... if we do this with 20 or 40 seo templates, changing only a few words out of each, is this enough to keep the seo value high and also keeping us from getting any G penalties? Is 20 enough? Is 40 enough? More, less or ?

Second Challenge

This is where we are really looking for some outside the box thinking. We've figured out what I think is the best way to create the product info and keep it unique on each page. This content is about 50-60% of the content each page needs. The remaining 40-50% of the content needs city keywords and some other stuff that needs to be on each page, but I don't see any way to do it besides writing by hand (too much custom info, plus we want to keep the content as unique as possible on each page).

So, without the money to hire a ton of writers & people to post content for us, what processes might we be able to employ to build these pages as fast as possible? Every 1 minute per page costs us 68.3 manhours. So, obv every little thing can save us tons of time in the long run. I'm looking for any ideas that save us 10 seconds here, 30 seconds there etc. (while keeping the SEO value high)

I've thought a little about opening 10 pages at a time and working on them systematically, but not sure if that really saves time or not.

Any and every idea would be highly appreciated!

Jess

[Unknown Webmaster]

I've got a couple of half baked ideas - You have probably already been down these roads, but in case you haven't...

Page creation/keyword insertion
I would create the pages by using PHP to grab the keywords from external documents.

Pseudocode-ish example

<?php include('city.php');
include ('product.php'; ?>
<h1>Buy the <?php echo $product; ?> specially made for citizens of <?php echo $city; ?></h1>

Alternative
Another option would be to have the keywords inserted based on the URL of the page.

So if the URL were "www.example.com/chicago/product-x/", "chicago" and "product-x" would be read and used to determine which content to insert on the page.

[TheDonk]

Unknown Webmaster: I spoke with my partner (because I'm an idiot obv) and he explained to me what he thought you were saying. He said he didn't think we could make it work for some reason and somewhere around that time my head exploded.

Anyway, it led me to thinking this though (and it might even be what you were suggesting...dunno really).

Is there some tool, method or trick where we could upload some document, and have Wordpress (or some other tool) read that document, generate URLs and paste the content & meta data in?

I'm not technical by any means, please speak to me like I'm a 3 year old.

Thanks!!

[T]

Hi,
For the first challenge, once the template created i would used a custom software using the list of city and product to generate the 4100 pages in once by either ordering the template or randomizing the one used.

At the same time you could insert the product text that doesn't need to be customized.

After you will just to insert to put on each page the custom content. it could be done by the software automatically as well.

The software would do for example for a combination of a city and a product:

load template
change city and products in title tags etc...

insert product.txt (the common part)

insert product+city.txt(the custom part)

that for static pages.

If you use a CMS it should be possible to create file to make an import directly into the database.

If you have more questions or need someone for the software i should be able to do it.

[TheDonk]

Yes, could you give me an idea of what it would cost to have you do this for us? You can send it in pm if you like.

Hi,
For the first challenge, once the template created i would used a custom software using the list of city and product to generate the 4100 pages in once by either ordering the template or randomizing the one used.

At the same time you could insert the product text that doesn't need to be customized.

After you will just to insert to put on each page the custom content. it could be done by the software automatically as well.

The software would do for example for a combination of a city and a product:

load template
change city and products in title tags etc...

insert product.txt (the common part)

insert product+city.txt(the custom part)

that for static pages.

If you use a CMS it should be possible to create file to make an import directly into the database.

If you have more questions or need someone for the software i should be able to do it.

[T]

PM sent

[Ridge]

There is actually several scripts I've read about that will accomplish what UNWeb said, most of them were/are used for mass production of adsense sites, so I'm not sure how good they are. Wicked fire has a lot of tutorials on it, and I think BlueHat SEO and SlightyShady SEO did a few articles on doing this as well.

I'll see if I can dig them up.

As for your original issues, worrying about dup content and such - I think in general you will be find, you can find several large website examples which face this very same issues with the same products with 100 locations.

[TheDonk]

As for your original issues, worrying about dup content and such - I think in general you will be find, you can find several large website examples which face this very same issues with the same products with 100 locations.

You think 20 templates for meta data would be enough? Or should we go with 40?