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Why Try to be Better?
2008-06-06 10:16:00
When it comes to an easy life, only you can provide it; do not depend on your partner to fill the gaps which you have created in your own life.  I find that doing a little bit of work everyday keeps my mind active, keeps procrastination at bay and allows me to achieve things which would normally be difficult to achieve if I set out to do it within a competitive time-frame. One of the biggest factors in failure, is a lack of belief in one’s own abilities, coupled with an incomplete understanding of how to work.  The truth is that humans need to achieve to feel good about themselves.  It is nearly impossible to sit all day doing nothing constructive and feel at the end of the day exhilarated and happy at what you have not achieved… yet when you work hard for an hour or two you are able to spend the rest of the day relaxed and happy that you are in control of your life and actively building skills and achieving results that will accumulate over time into things which wi...

The Importance of SEO
2008-05-28 09:46:00
How do you make your website a success?  SEO - Search Engine Optimisation, is the process by which you tweak critical factors concerning your site (both on-page and off-page factors) to try to make it rank well in the search engines for key words or phrases that people search for.  if you rank well, more people see your site in the listing and hence you gain more traffic (i.e. site visitors). SEO is a risky business and can fall into three categories; Black Hat, Grey Hat and White Hat techniques.  The first two should be avoided as they involve practices which could see your site banned from the search engines.  White hat SEO is a different matter and is a legitimate way to try and improve your site’s positioning in the likes of Google, Yahoo and MSN.  As Google accounts for over 50% of all searches, it is worth focusing on this search engine (SE) for optimisation.  Note that the different SE’s require slightly different optimisation techniques as their algorithms ...

Positive Thinking and Happiness
2008-05-27 14:00:00
Though it may seem more like a personal objective, being a more positive person can have a dramatic impact on your relationship as well.  By increasing your ability to appreciate what you have and trying to foster a more realistic, optimistic outlook on your everyday life, you are able to remove some of the obstacles to a happy healthy relationship. For instance, if you were to look at the various actions you have performed which have negatively impacted your partner, how many of them were as a result of some bad feeling on your part? Maybe you were tired and depressed and you lashed out at your partner for some minor reason; or maybe you were stressed with the daily grind of working life and sometimes thought it necessary to remind your partner that his/her life was easier (which inevitably would lead to conflict).  Now imagine those circumstances if you had been more optimistic about the underlying cause of your annoyance.  Instead of complaining about your job, a more optimist...
More About: Happiness , Positive , Thinking

Google Sitemap Generator
2008-05-26 10:26:00
The importance of getting the sitemap right cannot be underestimated.  If you have many pages of content and your sitemap lists every page but one, then you can expect Google to ignore that one page in its listings. I have found this out on a number of different occasions.  Recently I installed a Wordpress plugin which automatically creates a sitemap everytime I write a blog post.  Everything seemed fine until I noticed that the blog was dropping in the SERP’s for keywords I knew it had previously ranked well for.  I decided to investigate and noticed that my blog had first started to perform badly around the time I loaded the plugin.  On checking the auto-generated sitemap created by the plugin I noticed that it had errors (every entry was missing the ‘category’ name in the path) which invalidated every single link to a post on my site’s blog.  Google picked up my sitemap and consequently determined that every page  that was identified in it did not e...
More About: Generator , Sitemap , Google Sitemap

Fighting and Arguments are Counterproductive
2008-05-23 10:32:00
It does seem obvious that two people verbally fighting with each other will not produce any productive conclusion, but in the heat of the moment it is difficult to remember this. There are many reasons why people get hot under the collar and lose their temper with their partner, but how can this be avoided? I think the solution lies in the appreciation of the need of each side in the argument to be ‘right’ and ‘win’ their case. To understand and to listen to their side of the situation is the key to calming them down. By trying to ignore what they are saying, by refusing to listen to them, by demanding that they listen to you, by screaming, by crying, by throwing childish tantrums, by not communicating, you are killing any chances of maturely resolving the argument and will most likely escalate it. If you are acting in this way and not communicating effectively, then eventually your partner will either walk away from the relationship or develop a mistrust...
More About: Fighting

SEO Tools
2008-05-22 10:10:00
So you have completed your site and you now need to focus on traffic.  At this stage you are starting to investigate SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and what it means for your site.  SEO is a popular area right now and has been for a while; basically it revolves around good practices aimed at increasing your site’s exposure in the search engines (and more explicitly in Google).  There are many techniques to try, but one sure fire way of getting noticed and rewarded is by having what we term ‘link-bait’.  This is nothing more than attractive content on your site which other webmasters/bloggers, etc will naturally wish to link to. As an example of effective link bait, look to Google Gadgets and Social Networking sites for inspiration.  It is possible to write small applications which could be useful for your visitors and for which they can then load onto their Facebook profile (for example) or on iGoogle.  Your application can either be hosted on your own site...
More About: Tools

Truth or Dare
2008-05-21 10:09:00
When it comes to relationships (as in many things in life), being truthful to your partner is as important as being truthful to yourself.  What I mean by this, is that by knowing the difference yourself between the truthfulness of your thoughts and actions, and being able to pass this to your partner (either by words or actions), you will be able to build up an incredible level of trust.  Without trust there can be no close relationship… trust and love go hand-in-hand and breaking one severely damages the other. If you are able to be truthful to yourself and to understand your true intentions behind your actions (which many people are unable to do), then you are in a good position to use this ’strength’ to build your relationship.   Truth fulness takes courage and knowing who you are, and why you do what you do, is a major milestone on the path to complete self-awareness and maturity.  The next step after this is to learn to share your talent and display this o...
More About: Dare

Die Lange Nacht der Musik 2008
2008-05-20 10:11:00
Die Lange Nacht der Musik (The Long Night of Music) for 2008 is upon us and it really is worthwhile to make the effort to visit the events on show. For one evening/night on the 31st May (8pm - 3am), venues across Munich will host various shows, cabarets, bands and music festivals. These shows will continue throughout the night and will be hosted in around 100 places such as bars, churches, concert halls, etc… just about anywhere really. In addition, as 2008 is the 850th anniversary of the founding of Munich, you can expect a bit more for your money this year. Munich is well worth a visit for this event.

Free Dating and Adult Personals - Too Much Choice
2008-05-13 09:42:00
There are a wide plethora of dating sites available on the Internet, from those which claim to be free (be wary of the ‘free’ marketing tag)  to those which cost a small fortune to become a member of.  Like with any investment in both time and money, you need to really understand what it is you are after.  Some of the biggest dating sites are able to offer you a lot in terms of a large user database and confidence in the product, however you should be aware that there have also been a few law suits against some big names in this business for faking profiles!  In addition it is hard for a site to protect against scammers loading false profiles, so you really should be careful that anyone you contact is in fact genuine. Smaller sites are often quite localised and popular within a certain geographical region.  These sites are also better able to cope with people loading fake profiles as they have a more personal approach to how they maintain their site.  You may find ...
More About: Dating , Free , Personals , Adult , Choice

Dating Advice
2008-05-09 09:28:00
The problem with online dating is that you need to be sure that what you are after is provided by the site you are using.  There are many sites which serve a niche market and you do not wish to inadvertently end up there if it is not your intention.  For instance, trying to find a soul-mate partner on a sexual submission site might not work to your advantage. On the same note, make sure that what you are after does not cause offence to the majority of users on a site.  If PVC and whips are your thing, then think again about joining the various Christian dating sites… they might not be too happy when you contact them looking for willing dungeon dwellers. There are many sites out there for many different tastes in relationship and interests.  If you need a specialist site, then find one.  On a more general level, most people in the Western world wish to just meet someone for a few dates to see what develops.  If you are hungry for children and desperately want marriage, t...
More About: Advice , Dating

Laughter is the Best Medicine
2008-05-08 09:50:00
‘Laughter is the Best Medicine ’ - this is a very common phrase and one which many people associate with the therapeutic benefits of humour for people experiencing illness of some description. It can equally be applied to any situation, including relationships. I have seen couples exist under a complete absence of any form of obvious enjoyment of each other’s company - no laughing, no joking around, no silliness - just polite, respectful, relatively unimportant conversation. What type of relationship could survive such a boring environment! I think partners need to understand that every system needs energy to survive. Whether that system be a mechanical one such as a motor engine, or a biological one as could be found in an ecosystem, or even in the smallest sub-society, such as a relationship. Here, the emotional balance of the partnership requires energy, yet it is often neglected. Without this energy, boredom results, complacency thrives and the rot starts ...

Relationship Expectations
2008-05-07 09:55:00
Often the reason for disharmony in a relationship is the level of expectation from one or both partners.  It stands to reason that if one partner expects very little from the other then they will indeed be extremely happy if their expectations are exceeded, which most likely will happen.  However, if someone in a relationship has high expectations, then their partner may struggle to fulfil those elevated desires.  This can have a two-fold impact.  Firstly the partner with high expectations will feel frustrated and disappointed if their expectations are not met.  Secondly, their partner will feel hurt and stressed at failing to live up to what their partner demands from them.  This will of course put strain on a relationship. I think the answer lies somewhere between what a person expects and what their partner can realistically provide.  With a little bit of practical evaluation of one’s expectations, it is possible to change them slightly to make them more accessible f...
More About: Relationship , Expectations

Going the Extra Mile
2008-05-06 11:53:00
In relationships, as in business, going the extra mile can really work wonders.  What does this mean exactly?  Well, ‘going the extra mile’ is a phrase which translates into someone making an extra effort for some reason.  Normally it would mean giving your employer a better deal by trying to work harder, or in this case, by making your partner’s life a little easier by increasing your thoughtfulness. For many people, love is an abstract concept and a little hard to have its exact definition pinned down.  For me, love can be measured by the level of sacrifice and thoughtfulness.  Love makes people ‘go the extra mile’ to look after their partner.  If you truly love someone, you care about them enough to want to make their life easier, even at the expense of your own comfort and energy. Parents are often ready to lay down their life to protect and care for their offspring, but how many would do the same for their partner?  Yet the love of a partner...
More About: Mile , Extra

Honesty Matters
2008-05-05 10:13:00
As you climb the pyramid the needs, your need for self fulfillment tends to force you to look at more refined ways of preserving your self-respect.  For instance, as you become financially secure, your thoughts move from worrying about the next paycheck, to less pressing concerns, such as what tennis racket you are going to buy this weekend.  With this rise in the quality of living comes a corresponding responsibility to broaden your skill-set and increase your inner harmony with yourself and your surroundings. One way to improve yourself in this matter is to focus on your honesty level.  When life is harder, it can actually be more practical to be dishonest about certain things.  For instance, if money is tight, sometimes it is necessary for some people to think they can skip paying the ticket to travel on the train to work some mornings.  Whilst this is wrong, you can understand that some people have more need to save that money for food.  Yet, when money is not a problem, i...
More About: Honesty , Matters

Dating Services
2008-04-10 13:41:00
What is the single most critical factor for dating sites in determining their success?  I guess there are many critical factors but one which strikes me as of the utmost importance is the ease of accessing photos and the quality of those photos.  For example, many sites insist on opening up photos in a new browser window, which can be inconvenient and time consuming.  In addition, the images are often either too large or too small… you would nearly think the site designer was unable to automatically resize an image.  On top of all this, you have the problem of poor navigation and control of images.  Ideally, a profile should have thumbnails loaded of all available images.  This keeps the data download small and allows the page to load fast.  A simple click or mouse rollover should allow a larger image to be seen, but within the same window.  Click in Love has as it’s cornerstone, middle-sized, clear images, viewable immediately after upload and easily accessible...
More About: Services , Dating

Date Russian Women
2008-04-09 14:45:00
Once the trend in online dating seemed to be to target Eastern European women looking to ‘escape’ to the West.  Though this trend still exists in many ways, as the EU expands and former soviet countries gain new wealth through the exploitation of energy sources, those countries where (traditionally) women migrated from, are finding economic ways to retain their citizens.  The result is that the abundant supply of beautiful, well-educated women seeking to better themselves abroad in Western Europe is drying up considerably.  I personally think this is a good thing for the women and hope that soon some sort of balance will exist between European East and West.  However, for a dating site specialising in intercultural relationships, this could be the death knoll.  By staying ahead of the market in terms of site features and better customer care, Click in Love hopes to facilitate the spreading of culture awareness across the EU and beyond, thus enabling partner searchi...
More About: Women , Russian

Keeping The SEO Momentum Going
2008-02-26 16:00:00
If you have decided to go down the route of doing your own SEO work, how do you manage to maintain the work level when there are no immediately obvious results from which to measure your success?  Without something to show for all your effort, it is human nature to lose motivation and eventually give up.  SEO is a tedious business, with nothing to show for many months and even years, which makes it even more likely that you will lose heart and neglect your SEO work.  So how do you manage to stay motivated? I use imagination.  Imagination and self-discipline.  I suspect my SEO efforts will pay off eventually, so I imagine the success that I hope to achieve.  I do not fool myself, as that is a dangerous ploy and one which could sink your entire project when your expectations are invariably dashed at some stage in the near future.  Instead, I focus on the likely position of my site in terms of traffic and popularity.  I try to taste the success and instill in myself a belief th...
More About: Momentum

How to Get Listed Fast in Google
2008-02-25 10:49:00
This blog is a work in progress and I often use it to test my SEO ideas.  What I have noticed recently is the speed with which Google is picking up these articles and placing it in their index.  I am referring to their main index and not their Supplemental index which has been discontinued.  For instance, I took the article title of my daily blog entry a few days ago and I timed how long it took from when I posted my article to the blog to when Google placed it on the first page in it’s SERP’s.  It took 8 minutes.  This is by no means an isolated example.  I find the search results display my blog entries no later than 20 mins after I post them. So how is this acheiveable and can anyone do it.  I am not sure.  For me I believe it is a combination of constant maintenance, perseverence, unique content updated on a daily basis as well normal SEO practices.  The result is a blog which Google attaches enough significance to it to enable first page placement in the SE...
More About: Fast , Listed

Social Networking as the SEO Medium of Choice
2008-02-18 21:32:00
Blogs are old news. In terms of SEO, the benefits of blogs will soon weaken. The truth is that people grow tired of their upkeep. It is like getting a shiny new diary for the start of the New Year… within a month or two the diary entries start becoming laboured and infrequent and soon after the unfortunate diary is discarded and dumped in some box to gather dust. Blogs are going the same way. Google will recognise this and inevitably reduce the weighting of blog links. So what now for SEO practitioners, where we will get the links to boost our clients’ campaigns. The answer lies in social networking sites and the proliferation of competition which has crawled out of the woodwork in the last few years. There are various ways to utilise these sites to best effect, but with a little ingenuity (which is what Power-SEO is all about) you can grasp some very promising opportunities in the coming months. I shall not give away my secrets, but watch this space for future updates on the ef...
More About: Social , Social Networking , Networking , Choice , Medium

Dating Site
2008-02-18 21:30:00
The Click in Love Dating site is still very much near completion, but unfortunately still not actually complete.  Due to a plethora of last minute tasks, I find myself swamped with too much work and not enough time to do it all.  I hope the site will be live soon, so keep reading this blog to see when the launch date is.  Nevertheless, it is still possible to register and avail of the forum (linked to from the front page of this blog).
More About: Site

Dating Profile Photos for Women
2008-02-13 10:49:00
How does a woman make a perfect photo for her dating profile? Well, ‘perfect’ is a subjective term and will vary depending on what image you are trying to convey. Often this image is determined as much by what you think others wish to see, as what you wish to portray yourself. After all, you are trying to show yourself in a light in which men will take notice. For instance, on some dating sites there seems to be quite a few photos on the front pages of scantily-clad women, often in poses intended to emphasise their body shape and suggest their sexual desirability. What type of image does this give to the men browsing? For many men, body shape is important, but women should not assume that is all they want. I will stick my neck out a little here and guess that once in a relationship, not many men want their partner posing in a sexually suggestive manner for all the world to see. In fact, many men would disrespect a woman who did that. If you are after a one-night...
More About: Women , For Women , Photos , Dating , Profile

Back in Business
2008-02-11 16:59:00
Due to recent situations, the ClickinLove Blog had been temporarily suspended.  Whilst these circumstances are unique, it is fair to say that things are still a bit shaky and regular postings to the blog may be infrequent for a while yet.  Nevertheless, it is my hope that things will return to normal soon.  Interestingly, despite the relative period of zero time investment in the dating site, it still is managing to grow of its own accord.  I think on Google, once a site reaches a critical point in terms of exposure, the link building gradually starts working under its own steam and the link stats grow by themselves… not so much an exponential, out-of control growth, but more a linear, arithmetic progression.  Of course this has a ceiling, but if the site reaches that point, I doubt I will be counting links too much as the site will have become a runaway success.
More About: Business , Back

Dating Site Link Bait
2007-11-29 12:20:00
A tricky subject and one which deserves a lot of attention is link bait.  What sort of link bait would work on a dating site (or any site for that matter)?  Ideally we would want something which would appeal both to the users of the site and webmasters looking for something hot to link to.  As you may already know, link bait can take many different forms, but the best must surely be pure, unique content that people naturally just want to devour.  Is it possible for a dating site to create such content?  I think so, but a careful recipe is required.  Be prepared for some programming and data capture, add a dash or two of appealing SEO-friendly CSS design, sprinkle a little statistical analysis on top, leave to simmer for a couple of months and then serve to your target audience.  Following me? Let us look at it in more detail.  You want unique content that plays to your site’s strengths.  Throw yourself together a forum and get the site’s members to contribute. ...
More About: Dating , Site , Link , Dati

Ajax Feed
2007-11-29 11:38:00
AJAX is a useful cornerstone of ‘Web 2′. As part of my effort to streamline administration of the dating site, I have placed a utilities management page online (password protected of course). With this I use AJAX scripting to populate forms with content extracted from purpose-specific databases.  This in turn allows me to generate ‘feeds on the fly’. What is the purpose of this?  Well, by having a web utility which can run whichever scripts I choose to execute, I am able to mix and match the content of my databases and generate truly unique feeds.  These feeds are in turn picked up by the aggregators, or already have been picked up previously and contain links back to my fresh content.  The difference with normal feeds is that this content is truly customisable across my entire site… not just limited to my blog or forum.  I can vary the feeds whenever I like to get backlinks to every page on my site. This helps maintain an even spread of backlinks (and in...
More About: Ajax , Feed

Website Security
2007-11-29 11:27:00
The issue of website security is an important one and worth learning a bit about. Hacking is an often misinterpreted phrase which many people use to describe illegally accessing and/or modifying restricted network content. This in fact is called Cracking. Cracking is something every webmaster needs to be aware of, especially if you have a database on your site.  If that database houses private information belonging to you or your clients, then the stakes are raised considerably.  Things such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting and other such security risks are a very real threat to the integrity and security of your data.  If this data falls into the wrong hands then the webmaster could be held liable for any adverse consequences which result from failing to protect that data, especially if it is sensitive information belonging to your clients which may include personally identifiable data such as bank details, credit history etc. Many webmasters feel the risk is minimal.  Af...
More About: Security , Website

SEO Sitemap
2007-11-28 10:58:00
I have started to create what I call an SEO Sitemap . It is a cross between a roadmap and a sitemap for the site’s SEO campaign. This document will be a clickable sitemap with links to information on every page on the site. This information will take the form of page keywords/phrases, keyword density, total number of words per page, number of outbound/inbound links, detailed list of on-page parameters and other such statistic-rich areas of SEO interest.  many standalone applications already exist for this purpose, but I find it does not hurt to create your own version. Do not confuse this with a normal webmaster Sitemap, of the type used by Google and Yahoo (to name a few) to help index a site.  My idea is purely as an SEO management tool to help organise and coordinate an SEO campaign.

RSS Reader
2007-11-28 10:53:00
I created a Google Reader account and subscribed the ClickInLove blog to it, just to see if the site feeds work ok. The results seem fine, in that Google Reader picks up the feeds ok. A Windows XP-based reader I downloaded did not work however. I need to investigate this further. What is all the fuss about RSS? Many people do not even know what it is, so how important can it actually be. Well, from an SEO perspective is it a useful tool to get your content indexed/linked to on other sites. Will anyone ever actually read it? Perhaps, but at the very least your site will have deep links to multiple pages, which is never a bad thing.

Grey-hat SEO Techniques
2007-11-27 16:00:00
Not all SEO techniques are good - not all are bad; somewhere in between lies grey-hat techniques.  These are those tried and tested ‘tricks’ which are not not altogether unethical, but which are definitely open to abuse and nearly invariably are abused. Let us talk about Blogs and the SEO angle.  It is fine to leave comments on blogs with a link back to your site, but how many people really do that?  What I mean is how many people leave informative, useful comments and how many leave spam disguised as a comment.  The SEO benefits of backlinks are well-known, as is the easy availability of such links from the multitude of blogs out there.  However, I consider this at best a grey-hat SEO technique.  Most likely it is heading towards a black-hat trick which may be penalised by the search engines eventually (or the link value downgraded).  How they might identify such meaningless comments on blogs is anybody’s guess. Most blog owners know how to filter the spam,...
More About: Grey

Online Dating Sites
2007-11-26 17:44:00
How do you choose which dating sites are the most suitable for your needs?  This is a very general question and will of course depend on how specific your ‘needs’ are  Assuming you are an average dating site user, then you will either be looking for a date or for marriage.  Ignoring the latter for now, let us concentrate on the former.  Dati ng sites contain a huge variety of people, all looking for that special person they wish to hook up with; but when choosing a dating site, you need to read between the lines to determine if you are registering with one which will help you find exactly what you are after.  Many sites are concerned with marriage only.  Not much use if you are after a slowly evolving type of relationship.  Some sites are very specific to a race or ethnic grouping.  Again, this may or may not be what you are after.  Most sites are geographically diverse, which can make it hard to find one with a suitable cross-section of society where you live. T...
More About: Online Dating , Sites , Online

SEO for a Dating Site
2007-11-20 12:03:00
What can be done for a dating site in terms of SEO?  How does one go about competing in a near-saturated field with a minimal budget?  There are ways.  How much longer these ‘ways’ will exist is anyone’s guess, but I suspect as the blue chips wade into the SEO foray, their big budgets may blow the smaller players out of the market and these ‘ways’ will cease to be effective. With any SEO campaign, a website’s strengths need to be played to.  What does your dating site have which gives you an edge over your competitors?  Work hard to carve out this advantage if it does not naturally exist.  Then exploit it by wrapping around it some sort of link bait.  Create a feed highlighting this strength and submit to the feed aggregators.  You need quality links to your site to compete, so be innovative and create the techniques which will lead to people linking to you.  There are various ways to do this.  The trick is to keep thinking of new ideas ...
More About: Dating , Site , Dati