Local Roundups turn your listings into ranked “best X in Y” guide pages, such as “Top 9 Best Indian Restaurants in Milton Keynes (2026)”. You choose the category and location combinations, and the plugin builds a real, editable page for each one using programmatic SEO. It is for directory owners who want search-friendly landing pages without writing each one by hand.
How programmatic SEO works here
Programmatic SEO means building many pages from a pattern instead of one at a time. Here the pattern is category x location: each combination that has enough listings becomes one ranked guide. More roundup templates are coming, and this ranked “best X in Y” guide is the first.
Before you start
- Your directory needs published listings with categories and a city or area filled in (or the Location taxonomy).
- Switch on generation once: Directory > Local Roundups > Settings > Enable Local Roundup generation. Until then the Generate tab shows “Programmatic SEO is disabled.”
- You need an administrator account (Discover and Generate require the manage options capability).
- AI is optional. Without it, pages are still ranked and built; AI only adds Quick Answer bullets and FAQs.
How to use it
- Open Directory > Local Roundups > Settings.
- Tick Enable Local Roundup generation.
- Set Primary Location (optional, for one main page per category, for example Milton Keynes).
- Pick a Location Source: City, Area, Location taxonomy, or None (primary location only).
- Choose a Guide title style, and tick Year in Title if you want the current year added.
- Under Guides to create, leave the first option ticked for “Best plumbers in Milton Keynes” style guides. Then save.
- Open Directory > Local Roundups > Generate.
- Choose the Tier and a Batch size (default 5).
- Click 1. Discover combinations. You see how many combinations are ready and a preview of the first 30.
- In Publish + drip settings, choose a publish status. To spread publishing out, pick a Drip publish rate and a start date.
- Click 2. Generate all and confirm the prompt. A progress bar and log show each page, and the log ends with “Done.”
- Open any generated guide from its link in the log, or from Directory > Local Roundups > All Roundups.
What a generated guide contains
Each guide is a normal, editable page (post type Local Roundup) with the address /best-category-in-location/. The page shows a heading with the count and update date, an optional Quick Answer box, an “At a Glance” table, a card per business, optional FAQs and Related Pages.
The table columns are #, Business, Rating, Reviews, Key Facilities and Price. Businesses are ranked by a Bayesian average of rating and review count, so a business with one 5-star review does not beat one with many strong reviews.
Schema markup
Every guide outputs structured data in the page source. An ItemList lists each business as a LocalBusiness item with its position, name, URL, image and, where it has reviews, an aggregate rating. A BreadcrumbList (Home, category, guide) is added, and a FAQPage block appears when the page has FAQs.
Drip publishing
To avoid publishing hundreds of pages in one day, set Drip publish to 5, 10, 25 (recommended), 50 or 100 per day. Pages are given future dates from 09:00 on your start date, and WordPress publishes them on schedule. The confirmation prompt shows the plan, for example “drip-publishing 25/day”.
The hub page
Guides live at addresses nothing else links to, so add one hub page. Create a normal page and add the shortcode [sdp_roundup_index]. It lists every published guide A to Z with a jump bar and the number of businesses ranked on each.
- Go to Pages > Add New and name it (the demo uses Best of Milton Keynes).
- Add a Shortcode block containing
[sdp_roundup_index]. Optionally addtitle="..."andcolumns="1"to4(default 3). - Publish the page.
Latest local guides
When the directory search page shows guides, a “Latest local guides” block lists the newest published ones as cards (business count and image included) with a “View all guides” link to your hub page. It is controlled by the roundups attribute of the search results shortcode (default 5, up to 12).
Settings and limits
- Fewest businesses per guide: default 5, allowed 3 to 10. A combination below this is not created.
- Most businesses per guide: default 15, allowed 5 to 25. Odd list sizes are preferred, so 15 rather than 14.
- Reviews needed before a rating is fully trusted: default 5, allowed 1 to 50.
- Title styles: Top 9 Best, Top 9, 9 Top, 9 Best or Best 9. Year in Title is on by default.
- Tier 1 is category x location. Tier 2 adds a qualifier (such as a facility, tag or price band). Tier 3 builds guides from what reviewers praise and you approve each one first.
- Skip combinations that already have a page is ticked by default, so you can rerun Generate safely.
- Delete all local roundups removes every auto-generated guide and cannot be undone.
FAQ
Do I need an AI key?
No. Ranking and page building need no external service. If AI is enabled in Settings > AI, you can add Quick Answer bullets and FAQs in one batch with “Generate missing TLDR bullets” and “Generate missing FAQs”.
Can I edit a generated guide?
Yes. Guides are a standard post type, listed under Directory > Local Roundups > All Roundups.
Will running Generate twice create duplicates?
No. A guide with the same address is updated rather than duplicated, and resume mode skips combinations that already have a page.
Why is my combination missing?
It has fewer qualifying businesses than your “Fewest businesses per guide” setting. Lower that number or add more listings to the category.
Do guides update when reviews change?
When generation is enabled, publishing a listing or approving a review schedules a regeneration a few minutes later.