What is a TOP search query?
Intuitively, we begin to guess that we are talking about something that is at the top. So, the TOP search results are the first 10 websites that appear in response to your query.
Why is this TOP important? It’s simple: a person enters their query, receives a list of options, and starts opening them in order, starting from the top and moving down. Many people check the first 3-5 sites and enter a new search query until they find what they need.
So why process the TOP 10 if many people only check the TOP 5? It’s simple: there are such pests as me! If I need something, I don’t mind checking the TOP 50! I really open 50+ sites looking for information because I understand that today the site may be somewhere far away, but tomorrow it will be a leader! So why shouldn’t I find today what others will only see tomorrow?
Let’s get back to the TOP. So, is it important to process the Internet resources that make it to the TOP when someone is looking for information about your company? Of course it is! If you have a bad situation in the TOP search results for popular queries, then most likely you won’t have a good influx of new customers. At least those who are looking for information about you in search engines will see what you would not want them to see.
What does this mean, just processing 10 websites and that’s it, you can live peacefully?
Oh, if only it were that simple, then the PR companies would be out of work. In reality, it’s not that simple! Let’s do a simple experiment. Come up with any search query, it doesn’t matter what… Got one? Write it down! A good option for the experiment is to come up with something neutral and popular, for example, “best movie of the year”. So, we enter this into a search engine, for example, Yandex, and get the top 10, which we write down! I’m lazy, so I took a screenshot. Now we go to Google and enter the same query there, get a list of sites again, and write everything down again. We compare the lists and see that they are not at all the same!
What did you expect? Each search engine is individual, and it has its own vision of what the top should look like. Yandex and Google are the most popular search engines among Russian-speaking internet users, but there are many others! No one knows which one a potential client will use! How is the top constructed? No one knows this, except for a few people who serve these search engines and configure them.
Let’s return to our experiment! Why did we record everything for so long? It’s simple, repeat it in 3 days and again in a week. Make sure that every time, different sites will be in the top of the same search engine, and the sites themselves will display different information. Why does this happen? I can only assume that during this time, new sites appeared that made it into the top. The reason may also be that the search engine saw that fresher information appeared on another site for this query and is showing fresh information first. The sites themselves have also slightly changed because something new appeared on them that displaced older information. It turns out that the top is something dynamic!
There’s something to think about!
So what’s the deal? Everyone says you need to work with the top, but it’s constantly changing? Yes, it’s not an easy task! BUT! If you constantly take care of ensuring that everything is okay in the top, then after some time it will turn out that the platforms in the top will simply change their order, but essentially, all of them will be processed! This will take time, but it is possible to achieve!
So, does that mean we’ve figured it out and can go monitor the top? And here’s my favorite phrase – “It’s not that simple!” There’s another nuance! There are resources in the top, but there’s another type of website that doesn’t make it to the top but is very important!
And many will say, “Don’t be ridiculous, if it’s not in the top, it’s junk!” I’ll say it differently – if search engines included these sites in the top, then the entire top would consist of only 3-5 sites, and that’s for all the key queries! What kind of sites are they? These are giants in terms of traffic. Every month, such sites receive 50,000 or more visitors!
There are sites where millions of people hang out! I think search engines intentionally push such sites out of the top, everyone already knows about them, at least those who need to, and the rest will somehow find them on their own. Let me give you an example of one such site – yell.ru. Its traffic at the time of writing this article is 3,100,000 unique visits per month! Have you seen it in the top often? Well, there you go.
I hope I haven’t disappointed those who follow the top and don’t look anywhere else (and there are many of them). All I have left to add is how I recommend working on building and managing your company’s reputation:
- Work with platforms that are in the top search results. Look for such platforms using multiple search queries in several search engines, as you don’t know exactly how and where people will search for information about your company;
- Don’t forget to work on websites that are not in the top, but are giants in terms of traffic, as these are also important resources;
- Work on websites that are beyond the top 10, 20 or even 30! Who knows, maybe they will be in the top after some time, and you will already be there;
- If there is no page discussing you on a well-known and highly visited website or a website that ranks in the top for thematic queries, try to make such a page appear there!
Another important point is to promote managed websites to the top. Managed websites are those that can have negative content removed under certain conditions. On some websites, for example, the administration can delete a negative review if the issue with the author of the review has been resolved, or if it has been proven that the author was not telling the truth. Alternatively, some websites remove reviews for a certain fee. In general, websites that offer the possibility to remove negative content should be prioritized in promoting them to the top.
By following these guidelines, you have every chance of promoting your company to a worthy level! Good luck!
