Template Formatting: Markdown and Variable Options

We see the potential to use programmatic search engine optimization on many different page and post types, so, at SEOBrrr.com, we want you to have the tools and freedom to customize templates and data variables to fit your specific needs.

In this post, we're going to same a few of the customization options available to you and provide you with a resource that you can leverage to learn about all formatting possibilities.

Markdown

Markdown is a super easy markup-language that you can format text - by writing text. By simply adding a special character or 2 before or after certain words, you'll enable special formatting.

For example, adding "*" before and after a word or group of words will italicize them. And adding "**" in the same manner will bold the containing words.

Links can be added by putting text inside of "[]" brackets, followed by the URL of the link in parentheses. Images can be added similarly by adding "!" right before the "[]".

You can also create lists, block quotes, different-sized headers (e.g. H1, H2), lines and more! To learn how to start using this simple markup-language in SEOBrrr, read the full Markdown Guide.

Variable Options

In addition to having many formatting options, we also know firsthand how important it is to build programmatic SEO campaigns efficiently. And one way that we help our users at SEOBrrr.com do this is by reusing their variables in different ways.

As a refresher, we help our users build campaigns by combining the data that they've either entered or uploaded, with the post template they've written. The data is populated into the template by way of variables identified by the column name where the variable value resides and curly brackets, like this - {{column1}}.

It's not as complicated as it sounds ... here's a current screenshot of how it works inside of SEOBrrr.com:

In the screenshot above, you may notice variables used like this {{variable, capitalize}} or {{variable, plural}}. Adding special keywords after the variable name (and a comma) allows you to use existing data values without having to create new columns for capitalized or lowercase, and singular or plural. This gives you more time to create effective programmatic SEO campaigns.

Here are all of the current options available to you (in the format above - variable, then comma, then special keyword):

• plural: Makes the variable value plural
• capitalize: Makes the variable capitalized
• uppercase: Makes the entire variable uppercase
• lowercase: Makes the entire variable lowercase

Another way that you can leverage variables are by making values into lists by adding commas. In the screenshot above, you can see in the "goals" column that the text is in phrases separated by commas. This allows the user to make a list of items instead of just inputting a word or 2.

Lists are great because they help to drastically improve the uniqueness of each of the posts leveraging the same template (unique content is very important for SEO and rank-ability).

When you leverage a column that contains value lists, you can take advantage of conjunctions.

• "and": Conjunctions are used similarly to the keywords above, except that they're placed inside of double-quotes. They allow the user to choose which word joins the final list item.

For example, if in my data table I had a column that contained value lists of types of food, inside the cell might look like:

apple pie, pumpkin pie, blueberry pie

If I use this with the "and" conjunction, when used in the template it would look like this:

... apple pie, pumpkin pie and blueberry pie ...

If I changed the conjunction to "or", it would look like this:

... apple pie, pumpkin pie or blueberry pie ...

In our experience, we found it very helpful to have the option of changing the conjunction.

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Did we miss anything? Would there be any other formatting or variable options that would be really helpful in making programmatic SEO campaigns more efficiently? Reach out to our founder, Tyler, on Twitter and let him know!