Dating Site Blog & SEO

Most people put a relatively decent amount of effort into a relationship.  I would guess that not enough effort is made on average, but instead of that, I wish to focus on another aspect of relationships and that is the commitment one makes to oneself.

Even if you are the best partner in the world (maybe especially so), you could easily find yourself in a position where you neglect yourself and suffer from this neglect.  By this I mean, not dedicating enough time to your own development and relaxation.  It is not difficult to get into the habit of always putting other people first and eventually finding yourself emotionally and physically tired.  Now, this is not a green light to be over-whelmingly self-centred; more like a gentle reminder to look at your own life and find ways to make time to do those things which give you your energy back.

I find having a nice relaxing walk helps, or even going for a run.  Sometimes instead of compromising on what DVD to watch, choose something you personally want to see.  Even in conversation, sometimes it is best to expect your partner to listen to you, rather than you always listening to them (not that you should have to fight for this ‘privilege’).  There are many ways to look after yourself and rejuvinate your energy levels.  Being in a relationship does not mean that you cannot also think of yourself.

Remember that a lifetime of compromising can leave you unfulfilled, resentful and unmotivated.  Take charge of where you want to go, what you want to do and make sure it happens… all the time without detracting from the dedication and thoughtfulness which you show others in your life… it is possible to look after others and yourself at the same time.

The new dating site layout is ready to be published online.  A few modifications are still required, but largely everything is ready and should be visible soon enough.

A lot of work still needs to be performed on the SEO side of things, as well as a few smaller bits of technical design.  Hopefully in a few weeks traffic to the site will start growing once the new-improved SEO-friendly design has been rolled-out.  This blog still plays an important part in keeping Google visiting the site, despite the constant ‘in development’ status of it, so I will keep posting to it until the site starts growing in strength.

As ClickinLove is predominantly a dating site dedicated to intercultural dating, I thought I would touch on the subject of language problems couples may face when they are in an intercultural relationship.  Besides for the inevitable misunderstanding which can arise due to both people having a different set of reference customs, there are also issues which occur when one or other misconstrues the meaning and nuances of idiomatic expressions and language peculiarities.

For instance, sarcasm, which may be a common conversational element in one culture, could prove hard to understand for someone from another culture.  Often an incomplete grasp of the language can make understanding sarcasm a little tricky and the meaning can go very awry.  Yet the person being sarcastic may not realise that their comment was misunderstood and the person who misunderstood may probably not even know that they made a mistake in their understanding of what was said and meant.  Consequently, communication between both people has suffered, yet neither may actually realise this.

That is why it is especially important in intercultural dating to avoid relying too heavily on cultural traits when talking, to try and avoid idiomatic expressions, colloquialisms and other such sentence constructs which can cause ambiguity.  The danger is that, unlike normal communication problems where issues can be identified and eventually resolved, with cross-cultural language issues, both people may not actually realise that the other person has misunderstood them.  Eventually, somewhere down the line, these issues will surface and the underlying reason for them will be hard to determine; by that stage it may be too late to backtrack and resolve the issues.

If you do a lot of work with Macromedia products and image-editing software like Adobe Photoshop, then you really need your development system (i.e. personal computer) to be able to cope with the workload.  For example, in Photoshop, you can open and edit many images simultaneously.  You might perform various actions on each of these images and if you are dealing with large JPEG’s (in the region of MB’s), then the history of those changes you are making could result in an awful lot of system memory (RAM) being used up.  This most likely will slow your system considerably.  Throw into the equation the processing power required to cope with using Dreamweaver or a video-editing suite of tools and then your system will really be under stress.  The consequence is a sluggish and slow to respond computer which will reduce productivity and increase your frustration as you try to work.

Recently my computer could not seem to keep up with my demands.  I had deleted unused data, uninstalled redundant applications and defragmented my hard disc, but still the development work I was doing was eating the system resources too quickly and slowing my work to a grinding halt.  After various tweaks, I decided that an upgrade was needed - well actually I opted for a completely new system.

Here is the specification of my newly self-built computer:

• Motherboard - I chose the Gigabyte X48-DQ6
• Processor - Intel Quad Core XQ9450
• RAM - 4 GB
• Power Supply - 500Watts
• Hard Disc - 2 x 320GB SATA, arranged in a RAID0 array
• Graphics card - 512MB
• Fan - the bigger and more silent, the better
• Backup - external hard disc, 80GB in an IDE (PATA) enclosure

I installed XP 64-bit on the system partition and keep all my data on a second partition.  I also have a smaller third partition to allow me to archive old data.  Note that I use XP 64 for various reasons.  Not only is it faster, but it also supports the large amount of RAM I have.  For instance, on my system if I run XP 32-bit, the OS only sees 2.9GB RAM, yet there is 4GB RAM installed.  On XP 64-bit, it can see all the RAM; this is because 32-bit systems only have an address range of 4 GB and this must be shared with other resources, such as the graphics card.  Hence if you use 4GB or more, it is worthwhile getting the 64-bit OS, which can fully utilise your sizeable memory.  Just make sure that your processor can cope with the 64-bit system.  I use the quad core q9450 from Intel, which is a great processor and one which overclocks very well.

All in all, my system was easy to install and to get working.  The improvement in my productivity is actually measurable in terms of time saved and the noticable reduction in frustration, as my computer no longer has to struggle to cope with Photoshop’s extensive RAM usage.

So, my computer upgrade was a very worthwhile exercise in improving my system and allowing me to work faster.  I would recommend taking the same action if you find that the common performance tweaks you can normally use are not really helping you get the speed you need from your machine.  Just remember, building a system from scratch is not as difficult as you may at first think.

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 will make you feel good about yourself and which will make your life easier and more happy.

The truth is that a good, happy, relaxed lifestyle only comes with daily effort and you must be patient to wait for the results.  If you spend 30 mins everyday running, then don’t expect to breath deeper and feel more energetic and fit in two weeks time (though you will probably see improvements within that time-frame) - keep at it and then in 6 months time you can feel proud of what you have done.  Just remember that self-discipline is your friend and procrastination is your nemesis.  If you sleep with the wrong one you will end up in trouble and consequently deserve the lifestyle you create.

Running from the 20th - 28th June, this years Munich Filmfest conincides with the 850th anniversary of the founding of Munich. This is Germany’s second largest fim festival and offers the following program:

• New German Feature Films

• German TV Movies

• Nouveau Cinéma Français

• American Independents

• Retrospective

• Kinderfilmfest

• Open Air

Many venues throughout the city are utilised for the festival. For a full timetable and listing of the various events, see the official Filmfest Munich site.

Many people use relationships and their partner to patch up areas in their life which they should be fixing themselves.  Self-improvement helps a person to become more balanced and less needy and hence able to choose a partner based on desire as opposed to need.  But what are the critical factors in self-improvement?

Over time I have come to identify one particular area which seems very neglected in today’s popular psychology craze; this is self-disciple.  Without the technique to control ourselves when we need to do work, we lose a lot of our potential and ability to make life more successful and consequently more fulfilling and easy.  With self-discipline we can learn that new language, stick to the exercise regime, maintain a healthy attitude to those around us, finish that important project and make better use of our time.  Without self-discipline, we sit around worrying about finishing the work and getting stressed, not learning the new language, not exercising regularly, taking our frustration out on other people, etc.  There is a massive difference in the quality of life between those who know how to make an ambitious life plan and stick to it and those who only dream.

The choice is yours.  We all know we need to be more disciplined, but few of us really take it seriously enough to try and tackle it once and for all.  Yet if we do it right, self-control and the world are at our feet.  Life improves when we plan our future and make the goals happen, as opposed to being a spectator in your own life and watching your dreams disappear, one after another.

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 (which stipulate the rules for how sites rank for various keywords) are different from each other and evolve over time.  Nevertheless, if you focus your SEO techniques on Google, which has arguably the most successful algorithm, then you stand a great chance of doing well in the other SE’s as well.

So what is good SEO practice?  There are two types of optimisations efforts; on-page and off-page.  On-page optimisation concerns tweaking your content, positioning of page elements and proper use of HTML tags/attributes.  There is a wealth of information about this subject… just go to Google and type “white hat on-page SEO”.  You need to get this form of content optimisation right!  The second area you need to deal with is Off-page optimisation.  This revolves around getting your site noticed online, via in-bound links, i.e. other sites linking to your site.  There are many techniques to acquire in-bound links and this is where most of the spade-work of SEO is performed.  It is not an easy task to do and will require a lot of effort and time.  I think a good starting point is to make sure you have around 4000-8000 good quality in-bound links, and keep building it from there.  There are ways to check the quality and number of these links, but that is for another post.  As with on-page techniques, look up Google to find out the best ways to acquire in-bound links, or search this blog to find some tips.

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 optimistic you would maybe find reason to be thankful and pass on this new found appreciation in the way you treat your other half.  This in turn would hopefully cheer your partner and cause her/him to treat you better and hence avoid a conflict.

By learning to appreciate your life and surroundings a little more you will most likely improve how you feel about things and in turn be less likely to take out your frustrations on those around you.  It is definitely a win-win situation with a positive feedback loop for all.

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 exist and hence was not indexed.  Overnight I lost the ability of my blog content to be indexed.

So, treat your blog with care and make sure that there are no issues with it.  If you find there are problems, immediately fix them and resubmit your sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools.

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 of your ability to act like an adult and resolve your differences, which will put a barrier between you.

So, to negotiate an argument I would follow these steps:

1. Calm down - allow time (in silence) for both people to relax a little
2. Listen - let the other person put their side of the story first (make sure you actually do listen though)
3. Understand - try to see things from their perspective
4. Communicate - once you understand their anguish, then put forward your side of events
5. Accept your own faults - if you are to blame for the argument, accept it
6. Compromise - reach a solution where both people are happy, assuming you are both to blame for the fight

Just remember, that contrary to popular belief, not every argument is caused by both people. If you are guilty of being selfish or immature, not communicating or getting angry, then it is your fault and you should accept this and make amends in some way. For every feeling of hurt you cause you need to address this and try to undo the damage. When you hurt someone and ignore the consequences, it has a habit of accumulating in intensity over time and spells relationship disaster, eventually.

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 or at least contains links/adverts to it.  Everyone benefits as your visitors get a useful tool, whilst you benefit as you get inbound links that were organically and ethically harvested.

Be inventive and creative and with a little bit of technical knowledge and the right direction, your efforts could result in a link-building campaign that works and generates targeted traffic to your site.

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.   Truthfulness 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 openess with your partner.

Many people say you can be too honest, but I believe it depends on the maturity of the people involved.   The truth is never something to shy away from and if you strive to be a better person, then being open to the truth will make you stronger.  Therefore I think it is better to be wholly truthful in a relationship as long as your partner is strong enough and willing enough to accept it.  The end result should be a new found level of trust and a consequently heightened feeling of love.  Ultimately, your relationship is in your hands and to make any relationship work you first need to overcome the obstacles set by the biggest protagonist in the relationship, i.e. you.  Fix your own problems first and then start dealing with those of your partner’s.  Learn to be truthful to yourself and your partner and you will reap the rewards of your efforts.

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.

There is a phenomenon, usually I suspect amongst younger adults, where some people are more in love with the notion of being in love than with the actual act of loving somebody. Their desire for love and their need to find someone to match their requirements can be so strong that they are in danger of never finding someone to meet their expectations. When they are in a relationship they can often mess it up by focusing on how much love they are receiving as opposed to how much they are giving.

The truth is that in our lives we should do all we can with what we have. You cannot really determine how much someone loves you, but you are able to make a big effort to show how much you love them. Make that effort and try not to dream so much about how much love you wish to get back. The latter will only leave you feeling short-changed and frustrated, whilst at the same time probably neglecting your relationship, whereas the former is more likely to make your dreams become reality and the relationship to work. Being in love with being in love is slightly infantile and not the best strategy for relationship success.

Without goals in life, we are liable to underachieve. The same applies to relationships, in that it is healthy to have something for a couple to aim for. The crucial factor is whether or not each partner has their own personal goals as well as generic relationship goals.

People in relationships need to be dependent (to a healthy degree) on their partner - this promotes closeness and strengthens the relationship. The human desire to be needed and useful to other people is a very important aspect of our social interactions and extremely important for couples. However, we also need to not place too much strain on our partner by being too needy. Remember, strength is attractive and energy-giving; if you lack strength you can damage the relationship by tiring out your partner and depending on him/her too much, which they may come to resent (I am not referring to dependency caused by disability, which is entirely different). Hence, why it is healthy to have personal goals in life. Of course both partners need to work together for their relationship goals, i.e. to achieve increased trust, understanding, save for that elusive perfect home, etc. In addition, to keep the relationship healthy and vibrant, give yourself personal goals. Things such as increasing your standard of education, combating irrational fears, taking up a hobby, etc all contribute to your own strength and self-esteem. These factors can increase the total energy in a relationship and both partners will benefit. Additionally, once your partner sees you improving yourself, he/she may be motivated to improve themselves also, which will have a doubly positive impact.

Self-improvement, via the goal-orientated approach, should keep you enthusiastic and breath new life into your daily routine. This increase in energy and strength is very attractive and will keep a relationship on the right track. Many failed relationships derail due to personal problems and are not always directly attributable to the actual relationship per se. Improve yourself, achieve your goals, keep your mind young and energetic and then watch as your relationship reinvigorates itself. Like in many aspects of life, the key to succeeding in something is to first inwardly critically analyse yourself and then set goals for self-improvement.

I find it a strange paradox that so many people love reading poems which describe love, yet fail to live that poem in their own lives. How can it be that something as artistic as a love poem can do so little to inspire the reader to act out the essence of what they read, for the benefit of their partner. Does this make them hypocritical?

To clarify my point, I need an example. Typical, many love poems centre around the death of a partner and the desperate longing and pain which a cruel twist of fate can wreck upon an otherwise blissful union. The reader of this type of poem has their emotional appreciation for beauty and value elevated (albeit temporarily) whilst they ‘experience’ the poem. Momentarily, they feel the loss which the poem describes and it touches them. Yet, do they return to their partner with a new found sense of urgency and a desire to treat them with more love and appreciation? Not usually, I suspect. The benefits of a poem appear to be short lived and appeal more to those who wish to engage in the quick fix of an emotional high, without accepting that this fix should come at a price of increased thoughtfulness.

An underlying truth about love poetry is that it helps us focus on what we have. It reminds us of the feelings, security, companionship and ‘pure’ love that we currently possess. However, even with this reminder, we still return home to our partner and threat them as a vehicle for our own happiness. Sometimes, understanding the essence of a poem can help us understand our own actions or the lack of. The trick, is to use poetry to heighten your own powers of appreciation. As you become more thankful for what you have, you can use this energy to benefit the person you love. This should in turn strengthen your relationship and hence the poem becomes more than just words, it becomes a tool to enrich lives in a very real way.

Don’t read poetry and miss the point - leaving a feeling inside you without providing an action to complement it is such a waste. Therefore, the next time you read a love poem, make up your mind to carry the essence of that poem through to some gesture which will highlight the love that you have in your life.  Creating a love poem need not mean putting pen to paper - a completely selfless act by one partner for another can write an entire love epic.

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 that the smaller dating site has a better offering for what you are after.  Though of course it is all about what your are looking for and whether or not those sites can provide you with it.
When it comes to the adult personals side of dating (and I use the term ‘dating’ loosely here), again, you would probably find that the big names suffer somewhat from fradulent postings.   However, with the smaller sites you should be aware that many of them are in fact serving niche markets and/or have a very strict critieria for the services they offer and the type of people they are trying to attract.  If you go online just looking for sex, then make sure that you are using the right site as it can cause offence and violate many sites’ terms and conditions of usage.

So, do your research, think local and don’t automatically choose the big players in the online dating game, there are many alternatives which may suit you better.

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, then perhaps this could also be deemed a specialist interest and you would be better suited to joining a marriage agency.  As a hint for women, if you appear too desperate to get married, men sense something is wrong and start to run… and rightly so.  Go for the relationship first and if you are well suited, then marriage would normally follow… try it the other way round and people in the Western world will doubt your sincerity to your new found partner.

Click in Love is both an introduction agency and a dating website.  We aim to facilitate the dating/meeting process for genuine people in search of love.  We believe in love, romance and all things that come with a dedicated genuine relationship.  People who use our site do so with the intention of forming relationships; not business relationships (such as what many intercultural marriages appear to be, where the man gets someone to have sex with, who irons his shirt and cooks for him, whilst the woman gets money, stability, visa and a family all based in a rich Western country).  At Click in Love, we deal with intercultural relationships where both partners want more than the basics.  If you feel you want something like this, then this site is for you.  If you are after something different (and there is nothing wrong with that) then I ask you to respectively remember that this site is for people looking for love and romance, so perhaps you are better suited choosing a more fitting site for your requirements.

‘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 to set in.

So where do we get this energy from to stop the relationship becoming emotionally ill - as with many things, laughter is the best medicine. Inject a little humour into your daily actions. Find out what makes the other person smile and laugh and aim to bring a smile to their faces as often as you think they need it. Reinvigorate your lifestyle by doing things which creates adrenalin, increases endorphins, challenges both of you and ultimately faciliatates the flow of energy through your lives. This energy is what life is all about. Use laughter to bring it into your life and everyone around will reap the rewards.

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 for the partner, without compromising too much on the end goal.  If compromise is encouraged, then both parties in the relationship can more easily achieve a happy medium where their needs are addressed without causing hurt and frustration to the other.

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 can and should be just as strong as the love for a child (albeit a different type of love)… many people seem to doubt this and let the child be the main reason for their relationship - this is a ridiculously immature mistake with obvious unpleasant consequences.

So, to make your relationship stronger and to show your love, make that extra effort to show how you feel and to let your partner know that you are capable of giving things a bit more effort and go the extra mile.  Some people believe this is unnecessary and sacrifices are not warranted in a strong relationship, but looking at the relationships these people endure may tell you of their emotional maturity and ability to comment on such things.

So what type of things count.  As a rule of thumb, treat your partner as you want to be treated.  Here are some suggestions:

• breakfast in bed
• a massage, even if you feel a little tired yourself
• get up from your chair and offer to make tea, even if you don’t want tea yourself
• meet them half-way coming from work
• a compliment, completely unexpected and heartfelt
• tell them you love them
• buy them a small, cheap thoughtful gift that required some energy to think of
• look after their emotional health and make sure you understand how they feel about their life
• occasionally be prepared to back down if they are angry and in the wrong

These are just some simple suggestions, but by making that extra effort in a relationship, you are showing how thoughtful and loving you are and your partner will most likely recognise and appreciate the attention.  As a word of warning, you should not turn yourself into a slave, just learn how to be more thoughtful occasionally.  It is a good habit to get into and you will also benefit from doing the right thing.

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, it is often the case that these same people still try to cheat the system and continue not paying their way in society.  This level of dishonesty is bad for them and as they rise into their new social class, they will be labelled in a negative light by their peers once they find out about their dishonest ways.  Honesty is necessary for self-respect and self-love.  Hard times force some people to abandon their self-respect in order to survive, but it is still wrong.  However, to be fair, honesty seems to be a value that is easier for those whose life is less harse.

With regards to relationships, honesty is critical to trust.  If a partner is found to be lying about small things, then the natural conclusion is that the partner will most definitively lie about big things (such as cheating).  This can (and does) breed an atmosphere of distrust in a relationship.  Without trust, a relationship is very severely limited in how far it can proceed.  People in a relationship have to remember that trust is hard to earn and easily lost, so even one or two moments of dishonesty can be enough to ruin the trust in a relationship for a long time.  If you find that your past, i.e. your ‘hard’ life, encouraged you to be dishonest, then ask yourself, as an adult, is this stil the case; are you still unable to lead a life of honesty.  By trying to incorporate truthfulness and honesty into your life and being intolerant of any form of dishonesty and lying in your own behaviour, you are effectively telling the world that you are climbing the pyramid of needs and are existing on a higher plain of self-actualisation and maturity than your peers.  This makes you a more valuable person in most peoples’ opinion and one which other emotionally-rich people will endeavour to become acquainted with.  Even more importantly, it tells your prospective partner that you have risen above your animalistic/self-centred instincts and have goals and standards which make you a very attractive person… someone who will rise to the challenges imposed in life and who will always aim for the right path to follow.  This attitude you foster will encourage trustfulness in your partner, which in turn will lead to a feeling of security.  If you are dishonest, you stand every chance of making your partner feel insecure and this may manifest itself in relationship disharmony.  If you are totally and consistently honest, you have acquired one of the cornerstone skills of a truly successful relationship and you will reap the rewards for your mature attitude.

Through observation in my own life and the life of others, I have come to believe that many unpleasant acts are borne out of fear. Not all acts of course. For example, everyone is born with a genetic predisposition to self-centredness, which, if left unchecked will lead to the development of an adult whose self-centred attitude will hurt those around him/her. However, it is not those types of situations I am referring to; it is the actions of one person hurting another due to a misguided belief that they are protecting themselves.

So what sort of actions am I referring to exactly. Let us take the personality trait of ’sensitivity’ as an example. In theory, being a ’sensitive’ person is a great life-affirming natural talent to possess. You can understand people better, spot emotions in others that many people fail to see, be more empathetic to your partner and hence enjoy closer relationships. In reality, it also means that you are vulnerable to how you perceive other people’s emotions/opinions/actions to affect you. This should not be a problem in a fearless person as they will generally not read the small print in a person’s actions and assume that person wishes to hurt them. However, mix fear and sensitivity and you have a potent mix which can make the possessor of these attributes a nightmare to live with. As explained above, a sensitive person will pick up on subtle emotional meanings in a partner’s actions… if fear resides in the heart of the sensitive person, they may start looking to protect themselves by checking to see if their partner is secretly trying to hurt them (fear causes us to look for the root of our fear and protect ourselves from it… it becomes an obsession and is addictive). Their fear causes them to probe their partner (albeit at a discrete, subtle level) to see if there is anything to be frightened about. This can cause a fearful person to inadvertently start engineering the very things they are frightened off.

Let me give an example. If a frightened man is generally fearful of his wife cheating on him and one night in mixed company he notices her tiny, extremely subtle flirtatious attitude towards a male colleague (which he will notice as he has the gift/curse of ’sensitivity’), then how will he feel? The mature man who has eradicated irrational fear in is life, may see this as a sign that his wife is enjoying attention from another man and therefore must be feeling undervalued in her daily life… perhaps he would surmise that he has been neglecting her slightly; afterall, she is married to him and they both love each other, so maybe he can change his attitude to her slightly and improve his actions as her partner. Eventually he will be able to tell if his effort paid off and she ceases the flirting. As a side-note, obviously they would need to discuss her actions in a mature calm way to try to determine if there is actually any real serious relationship problems beginning. Now, let us image that the man is in fact quit fearful and instead of having a rational heart, has one filled with fear of ‘what might happen’. Instead of being mature about it, he might let his fear take control and his imagination work towards the worse case scenario (i.e. she is, or will, cheat on him).

You need to understand that humans have an inbuilt mechanism to protect themselves. When a certain danger presents itself, humans need to make a choice and often the choice which is generally wisest for most situations is to prepare for the worst outcome, so you are not surprised, caught off guard and hence harmed. Unfortunately, in one of life’s bizarre twists, this has the effect of causing the exact opposite… prepare for the worst and you stand a wonderful chance of making exactly that happen. The reason is that emotionally, you are focusing on your worst fear to protect yourself, and consequently all your mental resources are pointing at the cause of your fear… this has the effect of preventing you from lateral thinking and solving your problem through other means. In other words, you are increasing the likelihood that your worst fears will become reality. Try riding a bicycle and focus subconsciously (if possible) on not trying to hit a lamppost in the distance… you will be surprised at how unnecessarily close to that lamppost you cycled in your effort to avoid it. Normally you would naturally have cycled further away from it when passing, but now you are focusing on avoiding it and bizarrely riding closer to the object you are trying to avoid. This is a psychological phenomenon and well documented in science.

Now, back to our example. The fearful man may now be frightened of the worse possible meanings of his wife’s innocent reaction to another man’s attention, i.e. her subtle flirting. He may imagine that infidelity will follow and all sorts of images will flash through his mind. Perhaps he will start to get angry and resentful. Maybe because he now feels hurt by her potentially innocent actions he may decide to hurt her back, just to let her know how he feels (many men do this because expressing emotions on subjects like this can be hard for them, so actions are easier for them to utilise). Whatever his actions, his suspicions and fear are likely to alarm, offend or push away his wife. In essence, his actions and interpretation of the offending situation have been perverted by his fear and consequently he has set himself on the path of realising his fears, i.e. she may become resentful of his lack of trust in her and this could lead to a relationship deterioration and hence her actually becoming more likely to cheat. A mature man would eradicate his fears and look on the situation with a clear problem-solving ability; a fearful man immediately jumps into ‘fight or flight’ mode and exasperates the situation. It is like cracking a nut with a sledge hammer.

This is just one example, but there are many daily events in our lifes and relationships where fear can cause us to misjudge the situation and hence actually make it worse. Fear is a healthy thing if controlled and experienced with the right stimuli… it is always healthy to experience fear when you turn a corner and a hungry looking tiger is sitting looking at you, licking it’s lips. It is not healthy to experience fear when that fear is a result of misuse of your imagination. Learn to eradicate imaginary fear and you will see yourself become more relaxed, happier, less stressed and more mature. You will most likely see an improvement in your relationship if your fear has so far been hurting it (which you may not even have realised).

Footnote: a word of caution, fear exists for a reason, so learn to differentiate between real and imaginary fears.

There are many ways to keep the excitement and interest alive in a relationship and most of these ways focus on the interaction between two partners.  There are other indirect ways which can be very effective in rejuvenating relationships.  One of them I will touch upon now and concerns not an outwardly direction of attention to the partner, but instead a change in direction of your own life path.

It sounds a bit dramatic, but really it is nothing more than making better use of your talent in various areas to increase your ability to experience life’s rich variety of creative activities.  The theory is that by increasing your own knowledge and skills in areas which fulfil you, you will then pass on the increased feeling of well-being to your partner.  As well as being more emotionally self-sufficient, you reduce the emotional baggage on your partner that you bring to the relationship.  By this I mean that many people expect their partner to fix all their problems and be a leaning post for everything that goes wrong.  Instead, learn how to bring into your life emotional experiences that do not depend on your partner… in essence, by doing so you are not draining your other half’s energy, but instead replenishing it.  This in turn will lead to an increased sense of well-being in your partner which could then be reflected positively back to you.  In short, both of you will benefit and the relationship will potentially enter a deeper phase of understanding and mutual love.  Many people prefer their partner to have interests outside of their own… it leads to a more rounded, less clingy relationship, which is far more healthy.

Another benefit of doing various activities/hobbies which fulfil you is that you have an increased base of knowledge and interests from which to talk about.  You will feel more confident as you become competent in your hobby and this will lead to renewed focus on the topics in your conversations which interest you and could help your partner respect you even more.  An upshot of this is the possibility that your partner could even show an interest and he too could benefit from following similar hobbies.

All in all, gaining experience in what life has to offer and becoming adept at a few fulfilling skills can work wonders for your self-esteem and independence.  This in turn can lead to your partner feeling less pressure and actually feeling more love towards you.  Many people are turned off by a partner who is too dependent on them as it creates an artificially high level of pressure for them to support their partner.  By removing this pressure and showing that you have an intellectual, creative side that empowers you, you may just find that your partner is impressed, relieved, proud and ultimately even happier to have you in her/his life.

SO what hobbies would achieve all this?  Anything which fulfills you.  It would be even better if some of your hobbies your partner could even share with you (though beware encroaching on their ’spare’ time and this could backfire and you could be accussed of meddling in their life a little too much).  I would recommend an interest which fulfills you emotionally as well as offers some sort of interaction with others.  For instance, the following list should provide some ideas on what many people do to enrich their lives:

• painting
• poetry
• writing
• photography
• knitting
• debating clubs
• dancing
• politics
• history
• horse riding
• flower arranging
• kite flying
• running
• book of the month club
• singing
• sculpture
• glass-blowing
• fine arts
• jewellery making
• golf
• yoga
• martial art

The list could be nearly endless.  The choice is yours, so go out and make yourself more fulfilled, more confident, stronger and more interesting… and watch your relationship reinvigorate itself.

After having spoken to a female friend about her boyfriend recently, I came to the conclusion that many people fail to understand their partner.  Apparently, her boyfriend would sometimes get angry for little reason and act too sensitively in certain situations.  She said he was actually a very nice guy and other than his anger, everything else was perfect.

After discussing this for a while, it transpired than when he got angry, she rose to the challenge and got angry back at him.  Fighting fire with fire is not a good strategy for relationship harmony.  Of course she has the right to get angry with him, but there is a subtle difference in each others anger which, in my opinion places her at fault.  In this case, his anger it seems may be caused by his abusive past (it appears he had a strict, violent father), whereas hers is caused by his irrational actions.   Why is this important?  Firstly, in this case the woman needs to understand that his anger is not a reflection on the current situation and she should view the trigger as nothing more than that, a release valve for the inner pain he has experienced.  He may not even know why he is getting angry and if his partner gets angry back and fails to understand the real underlying cause of his pain, then he will get even more angry and frustrated with both himself and her.  He wants to be in control, but was previously hurt to such a degree that he needs help to sort out his emotions.  Instead of getting angry with him, she would be better to try (if she can, and has the love and maturity to do so) to reach out a hand of patience and understanding.  By acknowledging (in a gentle and unpatronising way) that his anger is a consequence of the pain which was previously inflicted on him, she will be in control of the situation and he will end up feeling a mixture of emotions.  Firstly, he will feel relief - men often lose control of themselves when challenged in an angry state and they always end up afterwards feeling really bad and disappointed with themselves; so by avoiding a confrontation, she is helping him avoid hurting himself, which he will appreciate.  Secondly, love - show understanding to a man who does not (on the surface) deserve it and you will escalate in his opinion of you; you are proving to him how much more in control you are than he is and he will respect and possibly love you more for it.  Thirdly, shame - by your mature actions you will leave him feeling ashamed of his lack of control; this shame will more realistically cause him to look at his anger issues than if you shout back at him - shout back at him and in some way you are reinforcing his belief that you are in the wrong.  Of course if you rise to his challenge and fight back, then he will think you are deliberately pressing his buttons, showing him no love or understanding and basically failing him as his partner, which will hurt him more and cause an endless circle of anger.  More importantly, you are displaying a lack of knowledge of his pain and the fact that he feels he cannot really talk about this pain.  Show tolerance to him and he will start to handle his anger better.  A simple gesture such as touching his arm or even keeping silent may be enough to bring on his shame.

Now, why should a woman do this for her partner?  After all, he is getting angry and it is not her fault, so why should she have to make the effort to be tolerant and patient when he is being angry?   The easy answer is that she doesn’t have to do this.  In fact few women do.  However, if she loves her partner and wishes to end the random acts of anger, then she needs to understand that she is in a unique position in this man’s life to help him.  After all, men also make many sacrifices for women, so is it not the right thing to do to help a man who may be suffering from some sort of emotional trauma?  Alas, many women do not see it this way and effectively take it personally when a man displays his anger for silly reasons.  If he is worth the effort, then give him a chance and see if the gentle understanding way of dealing with his anger brings about results.  If not, then at least you know you have tried your best and the next step is either further professional counselling or a break-up.

So many dating sites appear to have messed up the single most important factor in retaining customer loyalty and driving increased site usage; i.e. the users’ photo album.  The importance in providing good, clear, easily accessible images to people browsing a dating site is well documented.  However, what are the main criteria for a good photo browsing experience?

First, we need to define the website limitations.  The administrator of a dating site can not realistically demand that all users submit professionally-taken photos; therefore the aesthetics of the image itself are not taken into consideration.  Then we are left with what the site designer can actually be responsible for:

• provide large images (a generous reciprocal crop factor should be supported)
• well-proportioned images (no vertical/horizontal skewing should occur during post-upload processing)
• quick load of each and every image after a user-triggered event
• easy navigation between images
• main image must be bigger than the thumbnail
• main image must not extend over the average page dimensions
• if possible, allow user to upload photo description for every image

Most sites flaunt at least one of these rules and a ridiculously high percentage only have one or two of the rules implemented.  I have seen some sites where the thumbnail image is actually the same size as the main image (if it is too small the photo is hard to see; if it is too large it takes too long to download).

I think the best solution is to utilise average size thumbnails, with the corresponding main image at least 4-6 times the dimensions of the thumbnail.  With the pervasive adoption of Javascript, there is no excuse not to allow users to view the images via a rollover function, and all on the same page.  In addition, there should be no need to navigate to a different page or a pop-up window to view the clicked-on image.  Follow these straightforward rules and the user will have a far more convenient browsing experience and usability frustration need not drive them away.

When writing PHP scripts for a complex website, it can be tricky to debug your code and remove bugs. This is due to the fact that you are running your scripts on a remote server (where your site is hosted). Most PHP programmers resort to using the Echo command or the var_dump() function to send debug info to the browser. Whilst this works, it is cumbersome and involves modifying code on the server. A far better way would be to enable real-time debugging on the server itself, which allows you to step through your code and look at the stack, local vars, etc. Is this possible? Of course it is if you have complete access to the server, but what if you don’t?

There is a solution. In a nutshell you need to run a server on your development PC, configure it for debugging and then use a debugging client to enable code step-through. All sounds a bit complicated and it is in fact a slightly messy task, however I have simplified the process for you and detailed it below.

1. download Apache, with PHP and MySQL (assuming you use MySQL). I find that the Xampp installation is quite convenient and easy to use, with everything you need to run a server on your PC.
2. download the debug extension to the PHP installation on Xampp.
3. download the Eclipse debugger client.
4. follow this tutorial to show you how to setup/debug your new system.

All you need to do is copy your web project files to the project folder (which you set up in Eclipse) and make sure that the project is housed within the htdocs folder of the Xampp installation. Everything should run fine if you followed the steps. I will write a more comprehensive outline of PHP debugging when I have more time. Feel free to ask me questions if you have difficulties.

Best of luck,
Will

If you are the administrator of a blog, you will doubtless be familiar with receiving a fair quantity of spam on a daily basis. Many of the comments would nearly make you think that they were left specifically by people who had read your blog. Closer inspection will however, show that the comments are usually generic and/or with the title of your blog and/or post inserted into the body of the spam comment. For someone new to blog maintenance, they may be fooled into believing that the comment was a genuine one. The danger here is that they will permit its inclusion in their blog and subsequently provide the spammer with an inevitable backlink to the spamming site. This will also have the effect of reducing the blog owners page’s PR weighting for valid links (PR is distributed amongst outgoing links evenly, therefore 2 links from a PR2 page, would carry more significance to Google than 3 links from the same page - do you really want some of your PR value being diverted to a spammers website?).

How to cope with this is not that difficult. Some bloggers refuse to accept comments at all. I find this approach a bit drastic. One way is to not publish a comment until it has been verified by the administrator, which is something your blog software can help you with by automatically temporarily storing these comments, awaiting for your approval/rejection. If you are unsure of the validity of the source of a comment, you can always remove the web address they invariably add to their post, hence depriving them of the valuable backlink to their site. If I am unsure, I take a sizeable portion of the comment text which looks generic, i.e. without any reference to my site or post title, and then I Google it to see if a similar comment is published elsewhere on other blogs. If so, I delete the post.

Many bloggers who wish to have a successful site and are novices in SEO, may feel that ‘Content is King’ and accept any and all blog comments. This is a dangerous strategy, as usually the comments from spammers are already on other sites and hence would be deemed by Google as duplicate content. As well as that the backlink to the spamming site can influence how Google views your site. Link to a bad neighbourhood and you may be ‘tarred with the same brush’ by Google, i.e. they will assume you are no different from the spammers they are trying to crack down on. This could seriously damage your site’s reputation in the Google index and once damaged, it is very hard to repair. So take the time and perform careful routine maintenance on your blog’s comment… it could mean the difference between a successful blog and a sand-boxed one.

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.  We believe that this design feature will prove most attractive to dating site users and offer a level of quality that is not matched online today.

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 searching to be that much more than a sleazy case of exploitation of vulnerable women.

Yes and no.  In the sense of SEO as it was a few years ago, then no, it does not work.  By this I mean no quick results are possible, no killer ’secret’ techniques exist to shoot up the rankings and no ‘experts’ exist who know how to make things happen with their ‘proven’ formulas.  If however, your expectations are realistic, then SEO can work.

Ask your SEO consultant for demonstrable evidence of their prowess in this field.  If they are any good, they will have an online setup (a work in progress) which they use to analyse the latest trends, to tweak their own on-page parameters and to show potential clients what they know.  For instance, I often use this blog as an example of what is possible.  It is a small blog, offering small tit-bits of advice, but by no means a ground-breaking Google-smashing piece of research.  Yet, in its own way, this blog can do what many major corporations are unable to do… i.e. it ranks well for whatever I wish to make it rank for and it does it very fast (i.e. in minutes… not hours, days, weeks or years).  For my clients, this means I can show them how quickly I can rank at the top for keywords they also may want to rank well for.  By using my blog I can show what I have been able to do, and by inference, what I can do for them.

Of course, to get another site to rank well for keywords which my blog ranks well for, takes a lot of time.  But by being able to demonstrate this ability in my own blog, I can show potential clients that I have the tenacity and ability to make it all work for them as well.  Nothing is guaranteed of course, but a little display of your own ability goes a long way to instilling some confidence.  Showing clients various other sites you have optimised and which rank well for certain specific keyword phrases is very much a cheap trick and one which should be frowned upon… it is too easy to pull the wool over people’s eyes with this.

Recently a few pages on the Click in Love dating site had a dip in PR.  Actually, the pages affected were all related to the Wordpress blog and they were scattered across several sub-domains.  I suspect the culprit is either Wordpress being penalised by Google (for some reason) or an initiative last week whereby old deleted blog entries were resurrected and re-posted onto this blog… perhaps Google may consider these reproduced entries duplicate content and punish accordingly.

Either way, the PR dropped one place and will need to be improved.  I just need to find the time to finish both the site and the SEO work required to make it successful.  If anyone else has noticed a drop in their blog PR for no apparent reason, then please let me know and we can try to work out what has went wrong.

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 that with a good framework of solid SEO practices and a healthy dose of self-discipline, I will reach my goals for the site.  Effectively I am rehearsing success in my head before I can even achieve it.  Many professionals do this in the course of their careers to focus and project an image of where they want to be.  By focusing on a desired goal and trying to make it as livid as possible, we condition or minds to expect that result and consequently find that we move towards it subconsciously.  This increases the likelihood of actually reaching our goal.

Self-discipline is an important trait you will need to foster to keep the goal alive.  By this I mean an unemotional commitment to the work required to reach your SEO targets.  Do not let a lack of motivation or any other negative emotion impact on your single-mindedness when it comes to doing the necessary work. I find both self-discipline and a focused mental attitude help keep me working on the SEO for ClickInLove.  Soon enough you will see the benefits of your work and your attitude will be rewarded.  Not everyone is able to work so hard on something with little to show for it for so long, so when you reach your SEO goals, you will have proven something to yourself… as well as reaping the benefits of conducting your own successful SEO campaign.

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 SERP’s in a matter of a few minutes for whatever topic I choose to write about (though this depends on the competitiveness of the keywords in the blog title).

Hopefully this will serve to remind blog owners that a consistent approach to writing your blog will help you achieve success with Google.  If you have decided to monetise your blog, then this could result in increased revenue for you.  So keep writing everyday and do not miss even one day.

So, if like me, you are not the greatest at backing up your data, then maybe, like me, you have found your data has a propensity to go walkies on occasion.  So what happens when this happens and you lose the entire contents of your blog… perhaps months or even years worth of work!  Ouch!  First thing, always make sure you back up your blog database, which can be done on the  php admin interface to your MySQL database (assuming you have both of these, which most webmasters do).

If it is too late for this and you are reading this article because you have lost you blog and need to get it back, then do not despair.  Despite losing my entire blog at least twice in the last year due to buggy Wordpress plugins, I am still here and have managed to retrieve most of my data.  How did I do that.  Here are a few tips.  Firstly, whenever you keep a blog, you may or may not be aware of a handy feature of certain blog utilities (CMS’s) like Wordpress, which generate a feed for your Blog.  This allows you to subscribe your feed (which is nothing more than a description of recent blog entries you have made) to a feed reader (such as Google Reader - just type this phrase into Google to find it).  The beauty of this is that certain feed readers like Google Reader, actually keep a complete copy of all your blog entries.  Now the only problem here is that you will have to manually re-enter (via copy/paste) all the entries, including blog titles, into your blog admin/entry page.  A painful exercise, but one which should not take more than an hour or so, depending on the size of the blog you lost.  There is a risk however.  If you used the ‘<more>’ command (as in Wordpress) then you will have cut off all the content which comes after that tag and the reader will not have a copy of it.  So you need to determine if you really wish to use the ‘<more>’ tag or not.

Another way to retrieve your blog data, is to look for sites which keep a cache of other sites.  Here is a website which details other archiving places which you can use to see if they have a copy of your blog’s contents: www.searchengineshowdown.com/others/archive.shtml.  I was able to get a fair amount of my data back from these archiving sites.  Yet again though, it may be tricky to get any blog entry back that was redirected with the ‘<more>’ tag.

Nothing beats keeping a backup of you MySQL database though (which is really easy) and it is well worth kicking off a Cron job to automate this sort of backup.  You can export to a number of different formats, with just raw data, or data and MySQL commands as well (to load the data), which is what I would recommend.  If you do lose your blog entires, then simply going to the latest backup and running the generated script will give you back all the entries you lost till the latest backup was created.

Work is still ongoing with the firefox extension toolbar I have been developing. Over the last couple of days I have started to appreciate the power of the Javascript capabilities present in the Chrome XUL API. In layman’s terms, this simply means that the toolbar can do a lot more than I realised. I plan to utilise the potential and merge into my toolbar some useful additions which will ease the SEO workload. For instance, auto-generation of forum RSS feeds and instant submission to aggregate feed readers would be a very handy feature. I have named my firefox toolbar ‘SEO Link Tracker’ and plan to release it for general download to anyone who wants it. This will be complete in the next few days.

Continuing on from yesterday’s post, I am making good progress integrating my SEO Javascripts with Mozilla’s XUL interface. Up to this point I have been learning how to use the various controls and propagate events through the DOM hierarchy. I have reached a stage where I can smoothly pass data between listboxes, monitor key events, parse user input and generate useful output (amongst other things). These capabilities will fuse together to form my SEO toolbar for Firefox. I plan to launch ‘SEO Link Tracker’ very shortly.

Today there appears to have been a mid-month Google update which has drastically improved the exposure of Click in Love in the SERP’s. Keywords for online dating sites are competitive and difficult to rank well in. However, I wonder is it worth gathering traffic via other means. For instance, if I write on this blog about engineering topics, it should attract engineers… which in turn may see that it is a dating site and decide to browse and see what is on offer. Today I noticed that my site for the last few weeks has been doing just that… i.e. by targeting various keywords, I am ranking well and getting traffic I would not normally have obtained for a dating site (thanks to Google’s recent minor update). The question is, will this traffic convert to useful leads? Only time will tell.
Will

How do we know when an SEO campaign is effective? Ultimately, every SEO campaign exists to increase targeted traffic to a particular site. However, it can take many, many months of hard work by an SEO engineer before any visible results are seen in terms of increased traffic. How then, can an SEO engineer prove that they are providing value for money to their client. This is a grey area and is a source of debate due to the ambiguity of the various limited metrics available to someone trying to measure the success of an SEO campaign. Some say that the number of inbound links pointing to the domain in question is a relatively accurate measure of how hard-working the SEO engineer is. However, this is misleading… links as reported by Google are only the tip of the iceberg and more work will definitely have been performed than what is visible to the customer. Another measure is the volume of traffic, but again this is also easily misleading due to the fact that the traffic could be non-targeted. The only way an SEO practicioner can prove to their client how effectively they are working, is to stay in regular communication with the client, discuss progress and provide status updates on a monthly basis.

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 stand, then feel free to pose like this. If you are after a long-term relationship, then maybe opting for a more modest image might help net the type of man you want.

Ideally, the ‘perfect’ image, is one in which you come across as being ‘balanced’. By this I mean, neutral, professional, warm of heart, etc. Sexually suggestive photos will lead to the wrong type of man showing an interest. Cover up. Wear beautiful clothes of course, but wear them in a way which does not suggest you are auditioning for a centrefold position. If you wish to show how physically attractive you are, then be inventive… posing in a bikini comes across as cheap and desperate. Show a man you have more than just a body to offer… do this and men who want more than just a body will start showing an interest in you. Women make the mistake by assuming that all men are basically animalistic and judge women on their shape; that is wrong. Initially, they are attracted by this, but it quickly vanishes. Despite what women think, men want more than just looks and your profile photo should somehow support this.

Instead of the bikini pose, why not opt for a sporting photo instead (assuming you wish to show your body, then do so in a less sleazy way). Better still, if you have a nice smile, don’t detract from it by wearing nearly no clothes… instead, get a closeup photo of your face, taken with a large aperture setting (this blurs the background and gives emphasis to your face in the photo). If using makeup, it should be subtle and not overpowering. Less is best.

Avoid photos which fail to show your face clearly. The face is the single most critical part of your photo to display information about yourself. Smiling is not always a necessity as a neutral expression can also say a lot. Obviously, frowning or negative facial expressions should be avoided.

To summarise, try to place your character in the photograph. Leave out the sexually suggestive poses; it impresses only the easily-impressed and you will attract only short-term interest from a man. Of course, if you feel that sex is the main gift you bring to the table, then by all means do as you wish to attract a man who wants a woman like this. There are many different types of relationship and I am giving an opinion on the types of relationship which lead to marriage and children… not a relationship based on lust and a disregard for what each partner has other than shallow attributes. Humans are incredibly complex and to sell yourself as a body, would (for most women) be selling yourself short.

If you need photography tips on how to take a good portrait image, then let me know and I can forward you some good resources.

Google is reaching a stage where its algorithm is catching up with the spammers, black-hat tricksters and those who wish to manipulate the SERP’s. No longer is it easy to trick the search engine with dubious coding and clever text-placement techniques. Whilst it is good for the end user to have more relevant search results, it does pose problems for webmasters. Until recently, the web was a level playing field and the small site could effectively compete against the big players (to a degree). With the advent of the constantly improving Google algorithm, smaller sites are finding it harder to rank well.

The reason is that, what were once considered safe strategies for improving your site’s SERP positioning, have now fallen foul of the advancement of the algorithm used by Google and instead it now favours big sites with the money and momentum to rank well. Gone are the days when a simple link exchange would have helped make you popular. Buying links is also frowned upon. Instead, you must have a relatively old site, an organic linking strategy, constantly changing content etc. All of these things favour the bigger players and make it more difficult for smaller sites to survive long enough to make it economically feasible to continue trading online. Of course, this is the way business has been throughout history, i.e. the big companies always managed to keep the biggest slice of the cake for themselves. However, one of the greatest benefits of the Internet was the fact that Joe Bloggs could kick-start a small concern and see it grow quickly to eclipse the companies which had been trading for years. I think those days are coming to an end, unless something drastic happens to the Internet model which will safeguard the economic interests of the start-ups.

One of the more successful website phenomena of recent years is the rise of social networking sites. For the traditional dating site, there is a potential threat in this rise. For example, a large subset of the online dating community also subscribe to these networking sites and the possibility to make new friends has increased dramatically for them… why should they bother with a dedicated dating site. The likes of Facebook and Google’s new API allow developers to create applications which social networking site users can install and access from their profile. One hot area for developers is to tie in their application with a dating site’s database. Many of the more traditional dating sites are failing to take advantage of this opportunity. Facebook alone has many 10’s of millions of subscribers, so by creating an application for this medium it is possible to increase your slice of the potential new dating market segment.

As the owner of a dating site, I need to look at ways to increase ClickInLove’s exposure online. Utilising the massive user base of the likes of Facebook and MySpace, offers small site owners like me, a chance to reach a target audience that would otherwise probably elude me. All it requires is a little programming savvy, the will and time to write a Facebook application and the viral methodology to get the application subscribed to by interested users. Eventually the big sites will squash all competition in social networking, but until then, there is always a chance this ploy will succeed.

When it comes to web design, you often have a choice of which scripting language to use for a particular effect/task. For client-side scripting you are basically limited to the prevalent Javascript language (Java Applets, Java and the like are also alternatives). However, for server-side scripting, you have PHP, ASP, VB scripting etc. For this discussion and ease of writing, I shall refer to client-side scripts as Javascript and server-side scripts as PHP. Which language should you choose? Well, it depends on three criteria:

1. target audience
2. scripting capabilities for the task to be performed
3. compatibility and usability

The target audience is a consideration, because it is important to know if your demographics include people who are likely to have limited browser functionality, e.g. those who may be using an Internet cafe (browser restrictions may apply for these site users imposed by the cafe IT administrators) or those who are more web savvy and disable non-essential browser services (such as image display, scripting, etc) and those who may actually prefer client-side scripting (for whatever reason). You need to take these factors into consideration when choosing which scripting language to use. This leads onto the next point, the actual ability of the language to provide the functionality you wish to deliver. For database manipulation, you cannot use Javascript, only a server-side language will suffice, such as PHP. For fancy usability techniques, Javascript is the right choice. Lastly, you may wish to consider the compatibility and usability of the scripting language. If the task to be performed can be implemented by either Javascript or PHP, then ask yourself what is more important… speed of use, or coverage. By this I mean, using PHP (or any server-side script) will be universally accepted by the browsers (as this script does not run on the browsers), it runs on the server… so everyone will be able to run it. However, if many people access your server, it may slow down the browsing experience for all those users. Javascript on the other hand, may not be supported or switched on for all browsers employed by the end user, so you might lose a percentage of your visitors through non-usability, however, as Javascript runs on the host machine and not the server, then heavy usage of your site will impact each end user less than if you implemented a popular feature exclusively in PHP. It is a trade-off and one which the site designer needs to consider when planning which language to use.

My preference is to use PHP whenever possible, but to make the assumption that Javascript is enabled on the end users’ host machine. In my opinion, AJAX should be incorporated wherever possible, which uses both Javascript and PHP. This allows a very quick way to query the server’s database and transmit the results back to the end user. For more on AJAX please use the search feature on this blog.

There are a number of tools which allow you to check search engine traffic.
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
http://www.wordtracker.com/

This one is interesting:
http://google.com/trends

Type in two keyword phrases in the previous link, separated by a comma and see the comparison in chart form. E.g. to compare ‘online dating’ with just ‘dating’, just enter in the search field “online dating, dating”, as below: