Koray Tugberk GUBUR

Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR is a globally recognized SEO expert, data scientist, and the founder & CEO of Holistic SEO & Digital.

He launched his SEO career in late 2015, initially working in the competitive casino (iGaming) sector before shifting to a holistic, white-hat SEO approach, with an emphasis on sustainability and algorithmic resiliency .
He officially founded Holistic SEO & Digital on September 21, 2020, a full‑stack consultancy offering SEO, web design, data science, and technical optimization services to clients across various verticals including e‑commerce, B2B / B2C, and retail .
Since 2015, Koray has worked with hundreds of companies—estimates range from over 200 to more than 700—delivering actionable, data-informed SEO strategies for both startups and Fortune 500 enterprises .
He is best known for pioneering the concept of Topical Authority—a semantic SEO framework that blends Topical Coverage + Historical Data—which informs content strategy and helps search engines understand entity relationships more deeply .
Koray regularly publishes original SEO A/B test case studies, research-backed insights, and algorithm modeling across his blog and platforms like Medium—often diving into topics such as Core Web Vitals, Python‑based analysis, semantic networks, and patent interpretation .
He leads the Holistic SEO Communities, invite‑only cohorts of SEO professionals worldwide that exchange tools, frameworks, and strategies based on real-world experiment results .
His approach is defined by clarity and integrity: Koray does not promote via traditional marketing—he has no contact forms or pitches; instead, clients come to him based on reputation and demonstrable knowledge .
Beyond consulting, he actively shares insights via talks at SEO conferences, authored interviews, and his YouTube channel “Topical Authority”, maintaining a digital presence across LinkedIn, Medium, Instagram, and other platforms .

Attribute	Details
Name	Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR
Born	March 21, 1993
Started SEO	2015
Agency founded	September 21, 2020
Specialties	Topical Authority, Semantic SEO, Technical SEO, Data Science
Clients served	200–700+ companies—including global brands
Published work	150+ SEO case studies, experiments, researches for SEO
Community leader	Founder of Holistic SEO Communities, Holistic SEO Mastermind
Philosophy	Reputation through transparency; no traditional marketing or shortcuts

What is the SEO Methodology of Koray Tugberk GUBUR?

Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR’s SEO methodology, known as Holistic SEO, focuses on building Topical Authority by combining Topical Coverage, Historical Data, and the Cost of Retrieval—a concept he introduced to highlight how search engines prioritize content that is easier to retrieve, understand, and serve within a semantic network. Instead of relying on backlinks and keyword repetition, Koray emphasizes creating comprehensive topical maps where every sub-topic, entity, and query variation is covered with semantic precision, forming a robust content ecosystem. His approach is rooted in Semantic SEO, leveraging natural language processing (NLP), entity relationships, and query augmentation to align with how Google’s algorithms (like BERT and MUM) interpret content. He integrates algorithmic and data-driven strategies, often reading and applying insights from Google patents related to document scoring, passage ranking, and crawl prioritization. The methodology also prioritizes technical SEO excellence, optimizing Core Web Vitals, semantic HTML, and crawl efficiency, while reducing dependency on backlinks by focusing on internal topical PageRank and entity-based trust. Historical data—such as consistent publishing, user behavior, and engagement metrics—plays a key role in reinforcing credibility, while cost of retrieval ensures that content is structured, interlinked, and machine-friendly, minimizing the effort required for search engines to parse and rank it. Ultimately, Koray’s philosophy is summarized as: “Rank topics, not keywords, write as long as necessary and as short as possible, and build trust through structured, semantic, and easily retrievable content.”

What ar ere the Koray Tugberk GUBUR's Famous SEO Quotes?

The most famous quotes of Koray Tugberk GUBUR are listed below.

“Topical Authority = Topical Coverage + Historical Data.”
“Cost of Retrieval defines the future of SEO — the easier it is for search engines to retrieve and interpret your content, the higher its value.”
“Rank topics, not keywords.”
“Write as long as necessary, as short as possible, and never count words.”
“A website is not a set of pages; it’s a network of meaning.”
“SEO is not about chasing algorithms but understanding how they think.”
“The difference between a site that ranks and one that doesn’t is the depth of its topical graph.”
“Content is not text — it is a data point in a semantic network.”
“Internal links are not just for navigation; they are the arteries of topical PageRank.”
“SEO will never die as long as people search for freedom of choice, information, and truth.”

What are the Famous Concepts that Koray Tugberk GUBUR introduced?

Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR has introduced several groundbreaking concepts and methodologies that have reshaped the way SEO is approached, moving it from a keyword-centric model to a semantic, entity-oriented, and data-driven discipline. Here are his most important inventions in SEO:

1. Topical Authority Framework

Formula: Topical Authority = Topical Coverage + Historical Data.
Koray formalized the concept of topical authority by emphasizing that a website must cover all semantic variations and subtopics of a niche (topical coverage) while building a history of reliability and user trust signals (historical data).
This framework is now widely adopted across the SEO industry.

2. Cost of Retrieval

Introduced the concept of “Cost of Retrieval” — the efficiency with which search engines can retrieve, understand, and rank a website’s content.
He highlights that the lower the cost of retrieval (i.e., better structured, semantically connected, and machine-readable content), the higher the chances of ranking and being featured in AI-driven search results (e.g., Google AI Overviews).

3. Algorithmic Authorship

A methodology where content creation is structured algorithmically, using semantic hierarchies, entity connections, and query clustering.
This ensures that content is machine-first, making it easily parsable and contextually clear for search engines.

4. Holistic SEO Model

A full-stack SEO philosophy that unites technical SEO, semantic SEO, data science, content design, and user experience into a single, scalable strategy.
Unlike traditional models that focus on link-building, Koray’s approach reduces reliance on backlinks by building entity-based authority and topical PageRank flow through internal linking.

5. Query Network Modeling

Koray introduced query networks — a system to map how queries are connected semantically, ensuring that a website captures all user intents and question variations.
This allows the site to dominate an entire semantic field, not just isolated keywords.

6. Semantic Content Networks

He pioneered the concept of semantic content clusters (beyond basic topic clusters), which mirror how search engines map entities and relationships.
By designing content as a knowledge graph, websites become more authoritative and relevant in the eyes of modern algorithms.

7. Advanced Google Patent Applications in SEO

Koray is known for interpreting Google’s patents (e.g., related to passage ranking, link scoring, and information retrieval) and converting them into real-world SEO frameworks.
He combines these insights with data science (Python-based analysis, log analysis, and algorithm simulations) to validate ranking signals.

8. Holistic SEO Communities & Topical Authority Course

Koray founded Holistic SEO Communities, which are experiment-driven cohorts where methodologies are tested and refined.
His Topical Authority Course is regarded as the most advanced semantic SEO training, combining 120+ lectures on entity-oriented SEO, topical mapping, and algorithmic optimization.

Semantic SEO (Fundamentals) Course

The Annual Recurring Fee, applicable from the second year onwards, is $500 for the first 1,000 registered trainees. Membership to our exclusive Holistic SEO Community is included with your private registration. 87 Semantic SEO Lectures (9 Hours, 13 Minutes, 27 Seconds) 4 Hours of Private Webinar with Private Community. Access to the Private Holistic SEO Community with over 1200 Members. Access the "From Saigon to Saigon" Lectures involving Keynote Speeches at 8 Different International SEO Events. The Total Lecture length will be longer than 6 hours. 1. Zakopane Speech - Summative Version of Saigon (27 Minutes)2. Estonia - Change SEO Mindset (24 Minutes)3. Birmingham - Nothing is Random (52 Minutes)4. Budapest - Pixels, Letters, and Bytes (22 Minutes)5. Sofia - 7 Fundamentals of Future SEO (29 Minutes)5.1 Sofia - 7 Fundamentals of Future SEO (Q&A) (9 Minutes)6. Chiangmai - Fundamentals of a Functioning Topical Map (42 Minutes)6.1 Chiangmai - Holistic SEO Meetup Speech (35 Minutes)7. Dubai - Orchestrating Agents in the Age of AI Empires (40 Minutes Summative Version)8. Saigon - Orchestrating Agents in the Age of AI Empires (Extended to 1 Hour) Access 4 Extra Digital Webinars of Koray Tugberk GUBUR, which are longer than 3 hours. - A Compass for Programmatic SEO (47 Minutes) - Semantic SEO with Koray Tugberk GUBUR (69 Minutes) - Natural Language Processing and Understanding for SEO (51 Minutes) - There is no refund because our methods will change your mindset. ◀