Maybe an odd question to ask, but before you read any further; do you know what search engines are?

Well, search engines are the websites with the little window where visitors can perform a search query with the keywords of a specific theme and once they click the search button, those search engines return search results relevant to that search query.

Just to give an example: You need an answer to a specific question and you consult the Internet – currently the biggest information source on the planet – by using a search engine such as Google.

You ask a question, by filling in a few words relevant to that question in the little window at Google and Google returns multiple answers by displaying search results that lead to specific websites that contain the answers to that question.

To ‘fast forward’ a bit towards the answer to my question in the title of this post, I want to make clear that search engines do make a distinction between websites that are relevant to the search query and that provide quality content and other websites that only display little content and with less quality.

They also give priority to sites that have a higher pagerank. That pagerank is obtained by websites that receive many links back to them from other websites. Which means that they are considered popular.

OK, then how is it with my blog? To be honest, I don’t think my blog is very popular. But I do know that it ranks well on ALexa.com currently 314.810 is my overall ranking on the entire Internet. Which means that there are probably millions of sites not ranking that high.

Alexa gives an indication of how many people visit a website, but not for a specific keyword or theme. That is what Google is specialised in.

Google is specialised in scanning sites with their spider (or Bot as they call it) and giving priority to them only for specific themes. So the ranking in Google can only be achieved if you target a specific industry or niche. Which is in my opinion only logical. Because a visitor to Google only asks a question about one specific theme. To give an example.

If a visitor comes to Google and wants to know more about ‘name cards’, then Google will look up in it’s database which sites contain quality information about ‘name cards’. The site that does the best job and that is most relevant to what the visitor asks will rank the highest.

This search query can also be very specific, such as: ‘blue name cards’. The site that contains info about ‘blue name cards’ will rank highest. But, if there are more than one site, Google will give priority to the one with a higher pagerank.

Search queries can be even more specific if they contain a certain region. An example would be ‘blue name cards in New York’. The highest ranking sites will be those that contain the words ‘blue name cards in New York’. It is highly unlikely that many websites will contain info about ‘blue name cards in New York’.

This blog however contains info about several different subjects. It doesn’t target only one specific niche. In fact it targets multiple subjects. So, it will probably not rank high for specific search queries.

However, occassionally a visitor might have a question about subjects that are not very popular and that are not easily found on other sites. So maybe those will end up here on my blog. And that is what happens now and then.

In my ‘Physical Progress’ category I talk a lot about the USMC PFT test. Well, maybe because I report regularly about it on my blog Google finds enough info and gives priority to my blog for certain search queries. In my traffic stats I can easily see what ‘keywords’ are popular and where people visiting my blog come from.

In the previous month only 38 people visited my blog, but they were unique visitors. Most came from Google, which means that Google shows people the way to my blog. It is strange but my most popular subject is ‘Homemade Pull-up Bar’. Other keyword phrases are ‘how to build a marine corps pullup bar’ ‘how to do more crunches’

So,they come to my blog most to learn more about ‘physical workout’. Of course that can change if I start to post about other subjects.

Anyway, thank you very much for visiting my blog.

Rudy