I created this video to share a behind-the-scenes look at how I’m scaling AuteurGraph, the visual film platform I’ve been building, with a strong focus on data-driven decisions and smart SEO.
AuteurGraph isn’t just a film blog — it’s a structured, API-powered film database. Think director timelines, film movement categories, box office data, and visually rich filmographies. But the real magic is in how it’s designed to scale — both for users and for search engines.
Here’s what I’ve been working on behind the scenes.
Indexing strategy: Sitemaps and internal structure
I’ve split the site into multiple sitemaps: directors, films, movements, decades, and more. Instead of a single sitemap file, I use segmented sitemaps to help Google understand the hierarchy.
Each page type has:
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Semantic, clean URLs
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JSON-LD structured data
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A strict content hierarchy with H1s, H2s, and H3s
In the video, I show how this structure led to 433K pages discovered in Google Search Console, with more getting indexed daily.
SEO by design, not afterthought
From the beginning, every design decision was made with SEO in mind. That includes:
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Lazy-loading content for faster performance
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Using canonical URLs on duplicated API content
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Adding custom content (like blurbs and intros) on each film page to avoid thin content issues
The goal was to blend utility for film lovers with discoverability at scale.
Real-time data + automation
AuteurGraph uses TMDb and other APIs to update film and director data in near real time. But I also enrich that with custom editorial layers — curated lists, genre clusters, film movement blurbs, etc.
The backend is built on Next.js with dynamic routing, so I can spin up 10,000 new pages instantly — all SEO-friendly and crawlable.
Are you building for scale from the start — or retrofitting SEO after launch?