Who is Koray Tugberk Gubur? Koray Tugberk GUBUR is the founder and owner of Holistic SEO & Digital. Koray Tuğberk publishes SEO Case Studies, Research, and Detailed A/B Tests along with their results. Koray regularly attends webinars, conferences, and SEO-related events. He focuses on Data Science, Machine Learning, Web Development, Entity-based Contextual Search, Semantic Content Network Creation, Marketing, Branding, and Reputation Management.

Koray has been born on 21st March 1993. He has graduated from Yeditepe University. Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR has more SEO Experience of over 6 years and worked with more than 200 Companies from Europe, Africa, and North America. Koray published 12 SEO Success Stories, 10 SEO Case Studies, 2 SEO A/B Tests, and hundreds of SEO-related articles. He has been featured in #SEOMOFO, TheWeeklySEO, and other types of SEO Newsletters. Koray has been chosen as the most-read author by Serpstat in 2020. Koray Tuğberk Gübür has published a webinar with RankSense for SERP Recording and animating, also he published various webinars in Turkey for Semantic SEO and Search, Core Algorithm Updates, and more. Koray has attended Tea Time SEO Event as a speaker.

After Google announced the integration of social channels into Search Console, the distinction between web entities and websites has become more visible than ever.

Google first connected social profiles to Knowledge Panels. Then they integrated them into Google Business Profiles and local panels. Now, social performance across SERPs and AI results is being reflected inside Search Console. They are also actively showcasing posts from your official social accounts directly within Google Business Profiles.

If you do not post consistently, you stay invisible.
If you post regularly, you earn the “Social Updates” visibility under your brand name.

During testing across multiple Google Business Profiles with specific local and service-based mentions, I observed something important:
Indexed URLs from forum contexts and the Web vertical, across multiple SERP branches, are contributing directly to stronger Map Pack rankings.

This means one thing clearly:
You are no longer optimizing a website. You are optimizing a web entity.

My recommendation is simple and strategic:
Integrate social media automation and management directly into your SEO systems.
Review your log files. Analyze how many referred crawls from Google user agents originate from social platforms. Google uses social channels to discover freshness signals and recent updates.
Compare how many indexed URLs exist for your brand across social platforms. That indexation is now part of your entity footprint.

SEO is no longer isolated to your domain.
It is distributed across your entire digital identity.

We are launching a new course in June 2026 on Visual Semantics and Algorithmic Authorship.
If you want to follow the updates:
https://lnkd.in/dp8mGy8E

Koray Tugberk GUBUR

CEO and Founder of Holistic SEO & Digital - Fortune 500 SEO and Business Consultant - Topical Authority - Venture Capitalist - Investor

Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR

Who is Koray Tugberk Gubur? Koray Tugberk GUBUR is the founder and owner of Holistic SEO & Digital. Koray Tuğberk publishes SEO Case Studies, Researches, and Detailed A/B Tests along with their results. Koray regularly attends webinars, conferences, and SEO-related events. He focuses on Data Science, Machine Learning, Web Development, Entity-based Contextual Search, Semantic Content Network Creation, and Marketing, Branding, and Reputation Management.

Koray has been born on 21st March of 1993. He has graduated from Yeditepe University. Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR has SEO Experience of over 6 years and worked with more than 200 Companies from Europe, Africa, and North America. Koray published 12 SEO Success Stories, 10 SEO Case Studies, 2 SEO A/B Tests, hundreds of SEO-related articles. He has been featured in #SEOMOFO, TheWeeklySEO, and other types of SEO Newsletters. Koray has been chosen as the most read author by Serpstat in 2020. Koray Tuğberk Gübür has published a webinar with RankSense for SERP Recording and animating, also he published various webinars in Turkey for Semantic SEO and Search, Core Algorithm Updates, and more. Koray has attended Tea Time SEO Event as a speaker.

Koray sees Bill Slawski, Marry Haynes, Jason Barnard, Shaun Anderson, Hamlet Batista, Elias Dabbas as examples SEOs. Koray Tuğberk is a Holistic SEO Expert who lectures in some universities as a guest lecturer.

I guess people who have the Khan last name is good at SEO always.

400th success share in the topical authority course community, which is shared publicly.

Well done Brother Saddam 🧿🙏

SEO Executive || Digital Marketer || SEO Specialist || WordPress Developement || Content Writer || Software Developement || Web Developement

Semantic SEO Result:  Koray Tugberk GUBUR  Approach

December Google Core Update? We Gained , Not Dropped.

While many services websites lost rankings and leads after the December Core Update, this is one of my client website continued its upward growth and 200% increased the leads 

 -Consistent increase in search visibility
 -Growth achieved using semantic SEO & entity-based optimization

This is what happens when SEO is done the right way, aligned with how Google understands content today.

If your website:

-Lost traffic after recent updates
-Is stuck beyond page 2–3
-Isn’t converting impressions into leads

It’s time to switch from outdated SEO tactics to future-proof SEO.

DM me if you want to grow you Business>

Luxury Travel SEO Case Study
Industry: Luxury Travel and Tours
Language: English

📈 Results
• 24% increase in clicks
• 10% increase in impressions
• 51% improvement in average position
• 16% increase in CTR

What makes this case study different is that the growth did not come from technical SEO, server performance, or backlink changes. The impact came almost entirely from semantic and structural improvements on the pages.

The main change was the implementation of advanced, fast filters with clear verbalizations on core tour pages. We also expanded contextual relevance by adding related destinations, locations, hotels, activities, and perspectives for different demographics, supported by strong visual semantics and algorithmic authorship rules.

Our methodology consistently applies four principles to every important augmented query:
• Visualization
• Commercialization
• Contextualization
• Verbalization

Every travel product, safari, cruise, trekking, or luxury package shares the same foundational attributes through frame semantics. Performance gains come from how these attributes are expressed, structured, and distributed across visual segments.

The result is coverage of co occurrences, contextual domains, and context augmentation at scale. This strengthens semantic similarity for query processing, improves document ranking, and increases eligibility for passage selection in LLM generated answers.

This is not content volume.
This is semantic architecture.

We will launch a Visual Semantics and Algorithmic Authorship course in June 2026.
Join to learn more: https://lnkd.in/dp8mGy8E

For any introverted friend here:

"You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than in two years by trying to get other people interested in you."

- Dale Carnegie

📈 SaaS SEO Case Update (English Market)

Last 6 months vs previous period:

• Total Clicks: 24.4K → +255.63% (from 6.86K)
• Total Impressions: 11.2M → +84.48% (from 6.08M)
• Average CTR: 0.2% → +100% (from 0.1%)
• Average Position: 6.4 → ↑ 16.88% (from 7.7)

Industry: SaaS
Language: English
Content Volume: Only 13 documents under a single sub-folder.

Why this worked

The key factor here is how Google classifies the website.

Google differentiates between:
• Content-only websites
• Functional websites

If you clearly demonstrate the functional value of your product or technology, you can pass certain ranking thresholds much faster, even with minimal content.

Above-the-fold design matters

There are four common patterns Google evaluates:

1️⃣ Function first, content later
2️⃣ Function and content together
3️⃣ Content first, function later
4️⃣ Content only, function on another page

👉 We deliberately used “Function First, Content Later.”

The moment a user lands on the page, they can use the technology immediately.

This aligns with what Google refers to as Center-Piece Annotation — a signal used to evaluate whether a page directly satisfies the intent behind the query.

Important nuance

Even for purely informational queries (e.g., “where to meet …”):

• You can rank for featured snippets
• The user can still see interactive inputs, submission buttons, and visual representations above the fold
• The H1 and contextual explanation can come later, without hurting rankings

This flips the traditional “content first” mindset.

Experience amplifies function

We didn’t stop at functionality.

We reinforced it with:
• User preference components
• Past success examples
• Experience-driven web components

This helps Google understand perspective, trust, and usefulness, not just keywords.

What’s next

📅 June 2026
We’re launching a Visual Semantics & Algorithmic Authorship Course.

• Current course owners will receive it as an add-on
• Focus: how machines read design, function, and authorship — not just text

🔗 Learn more here:
https://lnkd.in/dp8mGy8E

There is a Surge in the Results for OLD URLs to Rank Higher, esspecially from Socials.

Google is expanding the visibility of social platforms like YouTube, Reddit, and Facebook across the SERP. This is not a theory, it is visible in data.

When you check tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush, you can see URLs from 2016 to 2022 suddenly gaining stronger rankings again, especially from social platforms. Many of these pages were created before the generative AI content flood, which suggests Google may be prioritizing cleaner, human generated datasets.

We see the same pattern in real projects.

In a luxury travel project, the YouTube channel achieved
• +59% clicks from Google Search
• +40% impressions from Google Search

This is not YouTube Analytics data. This is performance inside Google Search itself.

Even more interesting, the videos gaining traffic are mostly years old. Their rankings improved recently because
• They are genuine, human created, non AI bloated content
• They match Google’s direction, People for People on Search

At the same time
• The website gained around +60% ranking growth
• Website, GBP, and YouTube strengthened each other
• Website to GBP, GBP to website, website to YouTube, YouTube to website, all show correlative rankability effects

This is not about hacks. This is about ecosystem level authority, trust signals, and real user value across platforms.

I usually share short insights like this.
If you want to learn the full structured system deeply, our new course launches in June 2026.
https://lnkd.in/dp8mGy8E

The backstory of the biggest SEO course launch, without hype, without exaggeration, without theatrics.

8,000 people stayed on the waitlist for two years for the Topical Authority Course.
On the first day alone, we exceeded 1,000 sales.

Today, we have more than 2,000 private community members, and more than 60,000 marketers, SEOs, and entrepreneurs in our public communities.

I am grateful to Oddys for bringing these questions together, because this interview is not about SEO.

It is about the journey of a person.

If you are building a brand, you will find the most honest and transparent experiences and lessons here.

Because building a brand is not about spending money on marketing.
And when you truly become a brand, nobody announces it for you.

Most of my personal branding came from the success stories I shared, but I never shared them for branding purposes. I shared them to explain, to teach, and to help.

And I still believe the same thing today.
When you stop trying to become a brand, you become one more naturally, and much faster.

Watch the interview and leave your questions in the comments. I will be happy to answer.

http://ktg.digital/ye6y

3rd Travel SEO Website in the 3rd Day, but this time with Links

📊 +185.78% clicks, 9.44K → 27K
📊 +89.97% impressions, 353K → 671K
📊 +48.15% CTR improvement, 2.7% → 4.0%
📊 Rankings influenced despite neutral BCAU impact

Can Semantic SEO be applied to backlinks and link graph manipulation?

The results below belong to another global travel brand’s hotel landing pages.

Over the last three days, I shared three different travel websites.
The first two won the BCAU.

This third one is neutral for BCAU impact, but we still moved rankings for seasonally critical landing pages using links and link graph optimization.
This is a rare case where I openly discuss backlink campaigns. A few days ago, James Dooley asked how topical maps could be applied to external links. This case is a direct answer to that question.

What we actually do

We do not build random links. We run what I call Link Sprints.

Instead of building links for a single site, we create a topical map and semantic content network across multiple websites, then position the main brand as the consensus source within the open web’s information graph. This consolidates PageRank, authority, and trust naturally around the target entity.

External publishing is synchronized with internal momentum.

Content velocity and link velocity reinforce each other.

We intentionally add correlation sources and links to reduce detectable footprints, while using definitional and comparative declarations to shape how the knowledge graph understands entity relationships.
The link graph remains active because older assets continue receiving natural links over time. It grows layer by layer, not through artificial bursts.

This is something I am now considering adding to our future education materials, partly due to conversations like the one with James.

In June 2026, we plan to launch a new course focused on:

 • Visual Semantics

 • Algorithmic Authorship

 • Information Graph Engineering
To learn more:
https://lnkd.in/dp8mGy8E

94% Click Increase and 33% Impression Increase for a Social Media Marketing SaaS

Language: English
Methodology: Semantic SEO (including Visual Semantics), Technical SEO, and Local SEO

This project doubled its organic traffic over the last six months by winning the latest Broad Core Algorithm Update (BCAU) in December 2025.

In parallel, the website increased its crawl frequency by more than 60%, while the total number of URLs remained stable.
For every web document, we introduced new components to better demonstrate responsiveness, usability, and functional value.

One critical improvement for SaaS websites is adding a clear “human face” to the brand.
This means defining real people, real roles, and real responsibility, especially on the homepage.
The homepage should clearly communicate who stands behind the product, the content, and the reputation of the company.

A second essential element is the use of verifiable reviews sourced from third-party platforms, and connecting those reviews with the SoftwareApplication schema.

Personally, I use onClick events for outbound review links to avoid leaking PageRank, while still preserving strong navigational and behavioral association signals between the brand and trusted review sources.

Another strong performance factor for SaaS homepages is allowing users to perform at least one meaningful freemium action, such as:
	•	Calculating
	•	Converting
	•	Transcribing
	•	Translating
	•	Testing a feature

Landing pages that provide immediate utility before forcing sign-up consistently demonstrate stronger responsiveness and engagement signals.

To understand this effect, you can analyze SERP behavior for queries like “download YouTube videos” and compare how different page types generate distinct click and interaction profiles.

To learn more: https://lnkd.in/dp8mGy8E

Do yourself and the people around you a favor, stop using AI to create complicated emails, fake reports, guides, or SOPs. It’s useless and turns you into a fluff generator.

I see this problem especially in enterprise corporations, not in small and medium businesses. AI doesn’t have your experience or your domain expertise. When you send a fully AI-generated document, you’re not being efficient, you’re wasting time and resources on both sides.

AI should support thinking, not replace it.

Lately, I’ve even started to consider a company policy where we simply don’t respond to emails written by AI, and we don’t accept any AI-generated documents into a project’s scope.

A new interview on Topical Authority, Visual Semantics, and Google’s use of social media signals — including how social content supports LLM training and broader strategic goals.

Huge thanks to Jasper for the thoughtful, high-quality questions.

http://ktg.digital/lrqr

398th Success Share in Topical Authority Course and Community.

Coming to the 400th very soon.

Google-Certified SEO Specialist | Semantic SEO & Topical Authority | Local SEO & GMB | SaaS & LLM-Powered SEO | GEO |AIO |AEO |Google Ads | AI

Alhamdulillah for everything.
This project is a strong reminder that when effort is combined with the right strategy, results follow.
Over the last few months, I worked with a client who truly matters to me. Using a Semantic Local SEO approach, I focused on building topical authority, improving search intent alignment, and strengthening local relevance.
By implementing the Koray Tugberk GUBUR semantic SEO framework, we achieved:
 Significant growth in organic impressions
 Consistent increase in clicks
 Sustainable local lead generation
This wasn’t about quick wins—it was about creating a long-term SEO foundation that search engines trust and users value.
Grateful to Allah for the opportunity, the learning, and the results.
 On to the next milestone 
#SEO #SemanticSEO #LocalSEO #OrganicGrowth #LeadGeneration #DigitalMarketing #Alhamdulillah

📈 +19.88% Click Growth in 28 Days (WON BCAU) | Travel Industry SEO | English Market | Global Project

Another Travel Industry SEO case study.

This project is nationwide and won the December 2025 BCAU.

Project strengths:

- Strong Semantic SEO architecture using programmatic templates and deep contextual connections to properly distribute ranking signals.
- Solid brand attribution (competitive but not artificially inflated).
- Use of Visual Semantics through structured information cards.
- Active social amplification, leveraging existing content to improve crawl priority via referral link flow.
- Lowered cost of retrieval by cleaning unnecessary URL layers.
Eliminated wasteful URLs that did not deserve to exist as pages.

This leads to a concept I developed:

Query Deserves Page.

- Not every query deserves a page.
- Some deserve a section.
- Some deserve a single sentence.

To achieve Topical Authority, the system must align with:
• Search demand
• User intent
• Google’s index refinement strategies

That’s why this project does not blindly create every possible combination (hotel + city, bus + region, tour + route).
It only publishes what the ecosystem genuinely deserves.

I will publish the full case study soon.

In June 2026, we are launching a new course on
Algorithmic Authorship + Visual Semantics
Learn more: https://lnkd.in/dp8mGy8E

Another Core Update win for an e-commerce website operating in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

This website’s topical map is processed in our Topical Authority course as a live example. Across nearly every industry, semantic structures operate through consistent “frames”, in other words, templates.

Google classifies queries based on their level of “templateness” to reduce cost of retrieval. When you align with certain generated ranked entity answers using the right layout, momentum, and contextual structure, you significantly increase a source’s overall rankability.

The December 2025 BCAU win was achieved by further closing the topical coverage gap on commercial queries. We expanded commercial collections based on query-term weight calculation.

For example, some queries do not deserve a standalone page, they should instead be handled as annotations or filters. Structuring this correctly improves relevance without diluting topical focus.

The website is also highly active on social platforms to provide strong product evidence and usage signals, while also contributing to crawl prioritization. If you inspect the URL Inspection Tool referrers or analyze log files over time, you can clearly observe increasing social referrals.

We also updated commercial pages to strengthen relevance for commercial actions. As you may remember, structured data typically focuses on two core actions: search and purchase. Every collection page should therefore include guidance on how to choose, how to use, how to buy, refund policies, and shipping information, supported by relevant informational internal links.

The project’s performance aligns with our concepts of ranking state and ranking scale. Since the current ranking state is positive, the source can safely expand publishing velocity until the next BCAU, using this opportunity window to accelerate growth further.

Additionally, every document on the website has been updated within the last six months according to recent query shifts.

Operationally, the project is supported by:
	•	2 Semantic SEOs
	•	3 Authors
	•	2 Developers

In June 2026, we will publish a new course on Visual Semantics and Algorithmic Authorship.
Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/dp8mGy8E

A Simple Programmatic SEO Case Study for a Premium Domain Registrar

One of the biggest challenges for domain registrars is scale.
They generate thousands of URLs, many of which target queries with little or no real search demand.
At that point, the real strategy is not “publish more” but decide what deserves to exist in Google’s index.

This project focused on clarity, structure, and efficiency:

• Optimized internal PageRank distribution using dynamic header and footer architecture
• Rebuilt and selectively indexed product pages with stronger components
• Designed a new content brief and layout system for generic category pages
• Implemented Product schema for individual domain pages
• Used Carousel structured data for category-level pages
• Prioritized technical SEO to reduce the cost of retrieval
• Applied a full redesign to the homepage, category pages, and product pages

The outcome was simple and measurable:
Fewer URLs → higher value per URL → stronger rankings.

This site had been losing visibility for nearly 18 months.
After restructuring, it won the December 2025 Broad Core Algorithm Update.

Every URL we removed helped Google focus more clearly on what truly mattered.

No hacks.
No shortcuts.
Just structure, semantics, and precision.

To learn more: https://lnkd.in/dp8mGy8E

This is the 401st success share within the Topical Authority Community.

What makes it even more valuable is that Saif achieved this by studying the methodology, interpreting the shared case studies, and applying the principles himself, not by copying tactics, but by understanding the logic behind the system.

The result is a clear, healthy growth curve, stronger visibility, and real business impact on the graph.

This is exactly how learning should look
Observe, understand, test, iterate, and earn the outcome.

Well done, Brother Saif Ahmed Zia

Avasoft | Kamsoft | X Tecxeo | x Disrupt | Freelance SEO Consultant

After following the guidelines and strategy based on topical authority and Semantic SEO by Koray Tugberk GUBUR, here what one of the in house brand achieved
After the December Core Update, many service websites saw rankings and leads decline.
One of our in house websites, continued to grow delivering a 100% increase in leads 📈
What made the difference?
✅ Consistent growth in organic search visibility
 ✅ Semantic SEO & entity-based optimization (not outdated tactics)
This is what happens when SEO is aligned with how Google actually understands content today.
If your website:
🔻 Lost traffic after recent updates
 🔻 Is stuck on page 2 or 3
 🔻 Gets impressions but no real conversions
It’s time to shift from old-school SEO to a future-ready, algorithm-proof approach.

Many thanks for coming to our event and creating this great material for our industry.

Head of Odys Podcast

"Creating a community is not opening a Facebook group — you have to really care about people." — Koray Tugberk GUBUR explains what most founders get wrong about community-led growth.

In our newest Odys Podcast episode, Koray Tugberk GUBUR, founder of Holistic SEO & Digital and creator of the topical authority methodology, reveals how he built a 40,000-person community that generated $1 million+ in 48 hours — without spending a single dollar on marketing or advertising.

🟣 The Accidental $1M Launch:
• How 8,000 people waited on a waitlist for 2 years (and stayed)
• Why the community grew to 32,000 Facebook members, 25,000 newsletter subscribers — all organically
• The moment that shocked the SEO industry: ranking 4 websites without backlinks
• "I became a brand without realizing I was becoming a brand"

🟣 What Makes Community-Led Growth Actually Work:
• Why most communities fail: founders want attention, not relationships
• The difference between opening a Facebook group vs. building a real community
• How internal cohorts (automation, AI, semantics, technical, business) create deeper engagement
• "Don't expect anything in return — just see them as your friends and support them"

🟣 The Dark Side of Building a Brand:
• Dealing with slander, trademark attempts, and people hijacking your concepts
• Why it took 2 years to stop caring about public criticism
• How to tell real friends from people using you for business purposes
• The policy: never respond to negativity, never block critics (they become future members)

🟣 Strategic Advice for Business Leaders:
• Why being the smartest person in the room is actually a bad thing
• "Don't try to be the best SEO — try to be the best manager and strategist"
• Focus on business conferences, not just SEO conferences, if you want to build wealth

🟣 Speaking Strategy That Builds Authority:
• 12+ conferences in one year — each talk builds on the previous one
• Why repeating the same speech is terrible (and what to do instead)
• How episodic conference talks became the foundation for Topical Authority 2.0
• Publishing real results with real website names vs. influencer marketing tricks

🟣 The Future Vision:
• Creating a technology and business hub in Kusadasi, Turkey
• Bringing community members to live together year-round
• "I want to vanish slowly" — building leaders who can carry the work forward
• New course on algorithmic authorship (what people now call "AI optimization")

Link in comments 👇

It is a pleasure to be part of, thank you. 🧿💯

Today, we continue our expert series highlighting leading international voices in search and AI, this time within SEO and with the amazing SEO expert Koray Tugberk GUBUR. Thank you for being a part of this series!

Koray shares sharp, experience-driven perspectives on SEO, entities, communities, and how AI is reshaping both search and e-commerce at a structural level. His insights are grounded not in theory alone, but in deep execution across real projects, real data, and real outcomes.

One of his interesting E-commerce insights, looking ahead to 2026, is how fast AI-powered commerce is becoming the baseline:

AI Commerce and Agentic Commerce won’t be innovations, they’ll be expectations.

“AI-driven product discovery, filtering, comparison, and ordering will no longer be differentiators. They will become a default expectation.”

⬇️  Read all of his insights below.

The series, created by AdRelevance, features one international search expert per day, focusing on what actually matters next and why.

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