Nomad List is a niche site built almost entirely with programmatic SEO. It maintains a single CSV/JSON dataset of >24,000 cities with scores for cost of living, internet speed, weather, safety, etc., often crowdsourced by its community. Using templates, Nomad List spins up landing pages for each city (e.g. “Cost of living in Lisbon” or “Safest cities in Europe”). Each page includes charts, maps, and user tips sourced from the data, ensuring the page reads as valuable content rather than raw data. Users can also filter by tags (like “party destination” or “family friendly”) to generate dynamic list pages.
- Strategy: Data-driven content pipeline. Every new data point (say, adding a new cost category) instantly enables dozens of new pages or variants. Nomad List organizes data by tags so it can auto-create highly relevant “best X” or filtered pages to match long-tail search queries.
- Execution: Automated template & community curation. Data about each city feeds into a content template. The community contributes extra info (lists of popular spots, pros/cons), which is injected into pages. The site also uses SEO-friendly components (HTML tables for data, internal links between cities/countries, map embeds).
- Results: Niche authority with low traffic cost. Over 24,000 pages are indexed, collectively bringing ~50K organic visits per month to a solo-founded site. Example: a “Best places to live in Europe” page can get hundreds of visits.
- Impact: Scalable MRR. As a one-person operation, Nomad List’s subscription revenue grows with every new dataset column (more data → more content → more traffic → more signups). The programmatic pages turned Nomad List into a go-to resource for digital nomads without traditional marketing spend.