Generate: Understanding Methods

Overview

When adding or editing a Group, the Generation section allows you to control how Pages/Posts are generated.  To explain how this works, let’s assume the following setup for your Keywords and Group:

The below methods will produce content as detailed:

All

The All method generates Pages/Posts for all possible unique combinations of terms across all keywords used.  In the above example, this would produce the 6 Pages:

• Web Design in Birmingham
• Web Design in London
• Web Design in Manchester
• Web Development in Birmingham
• Web Development in London
• Web Development in Manchester

This method will not result in duplicate content.

Sequential

The Sequential method generates Pages/Posts, honoring the precise order of each keyword’s terms. In the above example, this would produce 2 Pages:

• Web Design in Birmingham
• Web Development in London

Because the {service} keyword only has two terms, page generation stops once those two terms are used. The third {city} term (Manchester) is never reached.

Sequential generation stops as soon as any keyword runs out of terms. Put another way, the keyword with the fewest terms determines how many Pages/Posts are generated. Generation steps through all keywords together, one term at a time, and finishes the moment the shortest keyword has no remaining term to use.

For example, if a Content Group uses two keywords:

• {city}: 8 terms
• {postcode}: 3 terms

…Sequential will generate just 3 Pages/Posts. After the third Page, {postcode} has no fourth term, so generation stops — even though {city} still has five unused terms (terms 4 through 8).

If you need every term of the longer keyword to be used, either give each keyword the same number of terms, or use the All method instead, which produces every combination of terms.

This method will not result in duplicate content.

If the keyword contains a term index (for example, {city:2}), the second Term (for example, London) will always be used.

If there is only one Keyword across the entire Content Group, the Sequential mode must be used.

Random

The Random method generates Pages/Posts, randomly picking one term for each keyword for each Page/Post that’s generated.  In the above example, this might produce the following Pages:

• Web Design in Manchester
• Web Development in London

This method is only recommended for placeholder / dummy content that you want to quickly produce, as it has the least control.