🗒️ Overview
- How to create and prioritize topical maps
- How to use semantics to find info gaps and structure content
- How to protect yourself from Google core updates
A lot of people find Koray Tuğberk Gübür’s content confusing and difficult to follow. So we’ve set out to decode of the most cryptic people in the industry, and break down what he shares into clear and actionable steps.
This week, Gael sits down with Koray to chat all things topical authority in one of the most challenging interviews yet.
Semantics First
While he acknowledges the necessity of link-building, Koray emphasises the need to focus on features like quality content and reliability. The secondary aim, driven by semantics, is to develop a topical map of interrelated sub-topics around your brand.
He believes it’s the gain in search engine’s trust that eventually helps a site out-rank others.
Prioritizing Core Content
The first few pages of a website should center around its main theme or topic – it’s “core content”, as Koray calls it.
Once you’ve established a strong core – with content that’s directly monetizable – you can then expand into related topics that link back to the core content.
For instance, a website focused on camera reviews should establish its core content around detailed reviews. From there, it can branch out to discuss other aspects like lenses, autofocus, aperture, and so on.
Content structure and headlines should also not be overlooked.
Koray uses content templates, which allow him to maintain control over the structure of high volumes of content while still ensuring high quality throughout the process.
Pre-planning plays a crucial role in Koray’s strategy. Deciding on headers, anchor tags, and paragraph structures in advance helps direct all collective ranking signals to the main focus of the website.
Topical Maps vs Keyword Research
Koray focuses on using topical maps over traditional keyword research.
This method involves answering every conceivable question related to a website’s main topic or theme. It’s an effective way to cover information gaps and offer a comprehensive view on a specific subject.
Koray’s process involves using semantics to plan these questions, and answering them in a clear and concise manner in dedicated web pages. The focus isn’t on keyword gaps, but on information gaps.
He believes that understanding the operation of search engines is crucial. For Google, cost and quality go hand in hand.
By analyzing a lower number of high-ranking pages and checking similarity for the rest, search engines drastically cut down on cost. So using semantics to structure your content and make it more efficient for search engines to retrieve the information they need will ultimately lead Google to favor your page over others.
Prepping for Google’s Core Updates
Google largely divides sites based on their content’s topic and quality. So Koray dedicates a good chunk of his efforts to prepare his sites for the next Google core update – a time when Google reevaluates website tiers.
To improve his ranking, Koray eliminates low-quality pages from his website and suddenly adds a large volume of high-quality ones, targeting queries that can bring in a significant number of impressions and potentially steal rankings from larger authority sites.
Koray emphasised a need for constant updating and evaluation to adapt to core updates, and advised to keep track of the frequency of your competitors’ updates and publications. Aim to publish at least 30% more than them.
