Tool 1 · The grid
Topic clusters
Four clusters, one per era, each with a pillar guide and 11 to 17 spokes. Internal links run down the section like a stratigraphic sequence: every spoke links up to its pillar and across to the neighbouring era.
Site SRD-01 · Sofia, Bulgaria · SEO case study
Travel & Leisure
Serdika Steps · History walking tours · Sofia
How a two-guide walking-tour company became Sofia's most-cited history source
Headline find · 12 months
+305%
organic sessions
Modelled scenario, fictional business.
−0.3 m
Topsoil · the challenge
Buried under the aggregators.
Travel aggregators led every 'things to do in Sofia' search. The tour founders, both trained archaeologists, had no published content showing what they knew.
Sofia sits on two thousand years of continuous settlement, and the founders had excavated much of it. But a visitor planning a trip met marketplace listings first, each selling the same three-hour loop with the same five stops, described by people who had never held a trowel.
The brief was not to outspend the aggregators. It was to dig: put the founders’ knowledge on the page, era by era, so that both people and AI search would find the original source.
things to do in sofia history
- Big Tour Marketplace
- Listicle Travel Site
- Generic Review Portal
- City Pass Reseller
serdika-steps.example: #38
things to do in sofia history
- AI Overview cites serdika-steps.example
- Ancient Serdica: the complete guide
- Event · Sat 10:00 · 2h30 · 25 EUR
- Big Tour Marketplace
serdika-steps.example: #1 and #2
−1.2 m
Trial trench · audit and diagnosis
Six contexts recorded before a single guide was written.
- Context 001Content
Four pages, zero history
The site was a homepage, a booking page, an about page and a contact form. Two archaeologists with 30 seasons of fieldwork between them had published nothing a search engine could read.
- Context 002SERP
Aggregators held 9 of the top 10
For 'things to do in Sofia' and its variants, marketplace listings and listicles filled page one. Serdika Steps sat at #38 for its own best-fit query.
- Context 003Technical
Tours invisible as events
Departures lived inside a third-party booking widget. No Event or TouristTrip markup, so no dates, prices or availability in search results.
- Context 004E-E-A-T
Expertise with no author
Neither founder had an author page, credentials or links to excavation reports. To a search engine, the most qualified guides in the city were anonymous.
- Context 005AI search
Answers came from elsewhere
AI Overviews for 'Serdica ruins' and 'Rotunda of St George history' cited encyclopaedias and aggregators. No answer-shaped passage existed on the site.
- Context 006Intent
No comparison content
Searchers asking 'free walking tour vs private' or 'Boyana or Rila' found only aggregator lists, at the exact moment they were choosing a tour.
−2.0 m
Method · the strategy
Four tools, one excavation plan.
The engagement ran on our Content Engine plan (content & ai search): a steady cadence of expert long-form guides, structured for AI search, with the technical groundwork to make every tour bookable from the results page.
Tool 2 · The sieve
AI Overviews
Each guide opens with a 40 to 60 word answer, then evidence: dated finds, dig photos described in text, citations to published reports. Passages are written to be lifted into an AI Overview with the source attached.
Tool 3 · The pegs and string
Event schema
Every departure became structured data: Event plus TouristTrip with date, meeting point, language, price and availability, generated from the booking feed so it never goes stale.
Tool 4 · The finds tray
Tour comparison guides
Honest side-by-side guides for decision queries: free versus private tours, Boyana versus Rila, six history tours compared on what they actually show. Serdika Steps appears as one option, not the only one.
−3.2 m
Excavation · four horizons, four clusters
Every layer of the city got its own body of work.
6.0 m · natural bedrock
Context sheet · 4.1 – 6.0 m
Cluster 04 / 04
Roman Serdica
Constantine's 'Serdica is my Rome': the walls, streets and amphitheatre under the metro.
- Guides in cluster
- 18
- AI Overview citations
- 15
Pillar page
Ancient Serdica: the complete guide to Roman Sofia, from those who dug it
- Serdica amphitheatre: where it is and how to see it today
- The Serdica complex under the metro, explained stone by stone
- Best history tour in Sofia: how six tours compare on what they show
Finds tray · ranking wins
- Oil lamp, intact
“serdica ruins sofia”
not ranking → #1
- Gladiator graffito
“ancient serdica amphitheatre”
not ranking → #1
- Coin of Constantine
“best history tour sofia”
#52 → #1
−4.6 m
Dig diary · month by month
12 months, one season in the trench.
- 010 guides
Survey. Crawl, SERP census of 420 queries, booking-funnel audit.
1,900 sessions
- 023 guides
Grid laid out. Four era clusters mapped; Roman Serdica pillar drafted.
1,960 sessions
- 038 guides
Event and TouristTrip schema live from the booking feed.
2,120 sessions
- 0413 guides
Author pages for both founders, linked to excavation reports.
2,480 sessions
- 0518 guides
Ottoman cluster opens; first AI Overview citations recorded.
2,900 sessions
- 0623 guides
Comparison guides: free vs private, Boyana vs Rila.
3,420 sessions
- 0728 guides
Medieval Sredets pillar; Rotunda guide reaches #1.
4,050 sessions
- 0834 guides
Answer-first rewrite of 14 early guides after citation review.
4,700 sessions
- 0940 guides
Modern Sofia cluster; socialist-monument walk launched.
5,420 sessions
- 1046 guides
Bulgarian-language versions with hreflang for top 20 guides.
6,150 sessions
- 1152 guides
Six-tour comparison guide; internal-link pass across eras.
6,900 sessions
- 1258 guides
Section closed. 58 guides, 44 citations, 131 bookings a month.
7,700 sessions
−5.4 m
Finds register · results
What came out of the ground.
Modelled scenario for a fictional business — not a client result. Rankings and traffic are never guaranteed; see our Terms.
Find 001 · Organic sessions
+305%
Find 002 · AI Overview citations
44
- Modern Sofia 8
- Ottoman Sofya 10
- Medieval Sredets 11
- Roman Serdica 15
Find 003 · Direct tour bookings / mo
40 → 131
40
42
47
55
63
72
83
94
104
114
123
131
Find 004 · Long-form guides published
58
Modern Sofia12
Ottoman Sofya13
Medieval Sredets15
Roman Serdica18
Ranking register
Google position, month 0 against month 12. Modelled.
| Find no. | Keyword | Horizon | Before | After |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 001 | sofia communist history tour | Modern Sofia | #33 | #4 |
| 002 | free walking tour sofia vs private | Modern Sofia | not ranking | #1 |
| 003 | things to do in sofia history | Modern Sofia | #38 | #6 |
| 004 | banya bashi mosque history | Ottoman Sofya | not ranking | #2 |
| 005 | sofia mineral baths history | Ottoman Sofya | #47 | #3 |
| 006 | ottoman sofia walking tour | Ottoman Sofya | not ranking | #1 |
| 007 | rotunda of st george history | Medieval Sredets | #41 | #1 |
| 008 | boyana church tour | Medieval Sredets | #19 | #3 |
| 009 | boyana or rila monastery day trip | Medieval Sredets | not ranking | #2 |
| 010 | serdica ruins sofia | Roman Serdica | not ranking | #1 |
| 011 | ancient serdica amphitheatre | Roman Serdica | not ranking | #1 |
| 012 | best history tour sofia | Roman Serdica | #52 | #1 |
−6.0 m
Bedrock · your site
Get a plan like this
If you know your subject better than the marketplaces selling it, the Content Engine plan turns that knowledge into guides people and AI search can cite.