In this presentation, you'll be walked you through how Trainline scaled high-quality human written content to 4M + pages without using AI tools and created customer-oriented pages while improving rankings along the way.

1. The redemption of
content automation: how
to scale unique content
to 4M+ pages
slideshare.net/GretaMunari1
Greta Munari
Senior SEO Manager
Trainline

2. Greta Munari
SEO Manager @ Trainline
5 years at Trainline, 6+ years in SEO
Avid Reader
Boulderer
Cat Lover
Advocate against pineapple pizza
https://www.linkedin.com/in/greta-munari

3. About Trainline
Trainline is the leading
independent rail and coach travel
platform selling rail and coach
tickets to millions of travellers
worldwide. Via our highly rated
website and mobile app, people
can seamlessly search, book
and manage their journeys all in
one place. We bring together
millions of routes, fares and
journey times from more than
270 rail and coach carriers
across 45 countries. We help our
customers find the best value
fares for their journey and smart,
real time travel information on
the go. Our aim is to make rail
and coach travel easier and
more accessible, encouraging
people to make more
environmentally sustainable
travel choices.
i. Based on transactions from
weeks commencing 06/10/2019
to 23/11/2019
ii. iOS rating from UK AppStore as
of 28 August 2022
iii. Trainline’s FY2022 annual
report
iv. Average monthly visits for year
ended 29 February 2020
v. UK Transactions Trainline’s
FY2022 annual report
Trainline is the world’s leading
independent rail and coach travel
platform
We sell tickets on behalf of
more than 270 rail and coach
companies and are adding
more all the time
We sell train and coach tickets
worldwide, helping our
customers travel in and across
45 countries in Europe and the
rest of the world
We sell tickets to people
living in more than 175
countriesi in 14 languages
Our customers can book in
10 currencies and payment
methods include
Apple Pay, PayPal, Google Pay,
SOFORT & iDEAL
We have built Europe’s
leading train and coach
app – with a 4.9/5* ratingii
There are more than
44m cumulative
downloads of our appiii
Our platforms host more
than 90m visits per monthiv
84% of our transactions
are mobilev
Our team numbers
more than 750 people and
more than 50 nationalities,
including 400+ travel tech
specialists and engineers
>160
Train
companies
>110
Coach
companies

4. Did you just say
content
automation?
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Actual footage of
all SEOs

6. What is content
automation?
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Spun Version
N.1
Spun version N.2
Spun version N.3
Spun version N.4
Spun version N.5
Original
article

11. Why has content
automation had such a
bad reputation?
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https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies#spammy-automatically-generated-content

13. Why do we still need it?
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14. 1.
Add valuable
information that
helps our
customers find
the best
solution for
their needs at
scale.
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15. 2.
Ensure Google
finds high
quality content
on pages even
when scaled
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16. 3.
Scale content
creation to
millions of
pages without
spending
millions of ££.
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How much it would cost to hire freelancers:
4+ million pages
£60 per page
30 minutes per page
=
£258,000,000
2,150,000 hours = 245 years

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Another actual footage
of all SEOs

18. What is content
automation for us?
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Content automation = scaling content
(written by humans!)

20. 1.
Gather the
keyword
clusters
that you want to
improve
rankings for
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21. 2.
Create the
“targeted piece
of content”
using one
keyword cluster
per paragraph
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Now this is when it gets interesting…

23. 3.
For each
paragraph create a
list of 7 completely
different ways of
writing it.
We don't use AI: it's
all high-quality
human written
content!
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We used Data Science to
create conditions within each
paragraph. This
enabled us to dynamically
integrate valuable info making
the content more unique.

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Aka “ask the devs to do their magic”

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Paragraph 1, version 1
Paragraph 3, version 3
Paragraph 5, version 5
Paragraph 7, version 7
Paragraph 2, version 2
Paragraph 4, version 4
Paragraph 6, version 6
…then pick different ones!

27. And this is what scaling content looks like!
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1
2
3
4
5
6
7

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How many unique content
pieces did we generate?
823,000
in 15 languages
12,345,000

29. Why didn’t we use
AI?
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30. 3 main reasons
Lack of control over the
process
Error Prone
Humans still do it better
Too many unique
content pieces to create
at scale
Lack of quality of the
content
Right tone of voice.
Target the keywords we
want
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… doesn’t mean you can’t get inspired

33. How did we
measure success?
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Step 1.
Created a baseline view of
rankings for all
keyword buckets using Botify.
Page
Cluster 1
Cluster 3
Cluster 2
Cluster 4 Cluster 5
Cluster 6

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Step 2.
Extended the baseline looking
for untapped keywords at scale
using Google Ads API.
Page
Cluster 1
Cluster 3
Cluster 2
Cluster 4 Cluster 5
Cluster 6

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Per page level:
To understand impact
rankings have on business
metrics (£££):
• Average rank
• Number of keywords the
page ranks for
• Trended GrSales
Step 3.
Per keyword bucket:
To understand impact on
rankings per keyword type
at scale at a more granular
level:
• Trend of average rank
• Trend of CTR
• Clicks
Note:
Launch > Page change picked up and indexed (6-8 weeks) > Minimum 4 weeks to measure to get a clear view and
stabilization = 12 weeks total until we get a clearer read

37. The results
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Market Starting
position
Dec '22 Jan '22 Feb '22 Mar '22 Apr '22 May '22 Jun '22 Jul '22 Mar ‘23 AVG
position Δ
IT 6 -1 No change +0.5 -1 -0.5 No
change
-0.5 3.5 3.2 -2.8
FR 7 -0.5 No change -0.5 -1 No
change
-0.5 +0.5 5 4.5 -2.5
ES 6 +1 -0.5 No
change
-0.5 -0.5 No
change
-0.5 5 5 -1
DE 9 +1 -2 -1 -1 No
change
-0.5 -0.5 5 5 -4
EN 6 +1 -0.5 -1 -0.5 -0.5 No
change
No
change
4.5 4 -2
We launched content automation in November '21, and this is what happen to
rankings...
Market Increased no. of keywords
IT +20%
FR +25%
ES +16%
DE +16%
EN +17%

39. Learnings
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40. It's a marathon,
not a sprint
Rankings were
impacted over
time, and we are
still seeing
improvements
month-after-
month
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It starts with
research
Putting time aside
to do research is
never wasted time.
A solid keyword
research, and
clustering is the
key to a successful
result!

42. Collaboration is
key
Involve the right
experts: make sure
you talk to data
science,
developers,
designers and put
together a common
objective
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Don't think small
Take calculated
risks that end up
paying off!
One of our
company values
is "Think Big" and
it inspired us go
the extra mile for
this project!

44. Thank you
Greta Munari