Igorivanovic guide

The days of rude gossips about link exchange being dead are over. Now Internet audience understands that success and failure with link exchange directory comes up to such simple things as relevancy of your link partners and how appealing are the looks of your directory. There is a simple way to bring any directory on new level with clean and fair visualization strategy.

Do you use thumbshots of your link partners in ? If not - you are missing extra power. Put yourself in the shoes of your site visitor. Ok, site visitor got to your link directory, sees different categories, different links. Maybe you've done a great job about categorizing each link, and even provided a searching mechanism for necessary links - good job. But nothing stops you from making one step further on the road to give maximum pleasant experience of searching your directory. Put thumbshots of index pages of your sites-partners next to link title and description. And you will see how great are the looks of your directory with this one tiny change.

For those who do not know what is a thumbshot, here goes the definition - thumbshot in simple words is a screenshot of web page.

With thumbshots being close to each link your visitors instantly visualize link partners before they click. And this is where your gold pot is hidden, because simple thumbshot give your directory a pack of advantages.

1. Your link exchange directory looks more professional.

When you compare the looks of the sites that go together with candy looking thumbshots with the same page that looks like a pile of links without thumbshots - absolutely another impression.

2. Your link exchange directory becomes more user-friendly.

No doubts here I think. People instantly preview what they will see. Site visitors understand that you have made everything possible to make their clicking experience on your site super fruitful. They will be getting back to your directory more and more, just because you give them an advantage that others are missing.

3. Your potential link partners are magnetized too.

When someone is on the verge to submit or not submit a link to your directory, thumbshot can become a trigger point inside their mind to say yes and submit you their link. If they have any brain, they will surely understand that their link with their thumbshot in your directory has bigger chances to be clicked on. Exactly what they are looking for.

4. Extra SEO power from thumbshots.

Surely each thumbshot can be given certain title in alt. And most probably this title will have your keywords, because you are building links with relevant sites. It means when search engines index your directory, they see now only usual link with title and description; they also see a bulk of pictures that carry necessary keywords inside. Of course, the alt title is not critical with search engines to love or hate your directory. But missing extra advantage is just a not very wise thing to do, isn't it?

Are there any disadvantages with thumbshots? No. But it is about some extra job with your link directory. If you are using a solution that automates link building and creates link directory pages for you, they may not have an option to add a picture to link title and description. But this is not a problem. Send them email with suggestion. For programmers it's not difficult: professional link directory software developers will help you with it. And if they reject, then better look for those who are ready to support their clients - not simply sell and forget.

With this list of advantages that thumbshots can bring your link exchange directory, would you agree to miss an opportunity of adding extra power to your directory? Surely not.

So, use this knowledge and make changes before others do them. Any type of link exchange directory will benefit from these efforts. And you site visitors will be bookmarking your pages. In addition to other benefits of your directory this can turn into new level of success with link building.

The term slicing refers to dividing something in small manageable pieces and the term coding here could refer to reverse engineering that particular object, to make it look custom built. Now apply these to a web template and you would be recreating your own master piece from an already existing web template to be used anywhere.

Easier said than done you might say? OK, then let's stop beating around the bush and get straight down to business. You would need readymade tools for slicing and then coding; Adobe's Photoshop comes with an easy to use slicing tool ideal for a beginner, no fuss and quite graphical to use. For coding your sliced template, Dream Weaver is an easy to grasp tool for new comers. First off, let's tackle how you would go on slicing a template.

Slicing A Template

For slicing purposes, you would require an already existing web template; a quick search on Google would reveal numerous websites that offer free templates to do with them whatever you want. Bearing in mind that you are a novice at this, pick one that is not too complexly designed and contains a logo, some simple text and banner, and save the template on your hard drive.

Now fire up Adobe Photoshop; from open file menu locate the saved web template. Once opened, locate the slice tool from the tool bar and click on it. The cursor will change to a scalpel and by using the scalpel, draw a box around logo. You will notice that logo is being cut or sliced from the template. Do the same for text and the banner. If you have done this right, you will have three slices ready. Now, save the sliced images by selecting the slice tool again and double clicking the slices, name them logo, text and banner respectively for easy reference. Once images are saved, export them to JPEG format for web use and save them to desktop. All done with slicing! Let us proceed to coding.

Coding The Template

Fire up Dream Weaver; choose HTML option from create new section. This will all be displayed in the New Document Setup window. Now, look at the lower right hand corner of the screen and locate the file tab. Click desktop items and then locate the sub folder options. Locate the folder on the desktop, where you saved the sliced images and the original ones. This enables Dream Weaver to import the sliced images into Dream Weaver. You are now free to place the logo, text and banner wherever you like using the designer platform.

Where is the coding in all of this you might ask? That is the beauty of Dream Weaver. As you import the images and drag and drop them according to your liking, Dream Weaver is behind the scene generating all the HTML code necessary without you worrying about it. Now imagine doing the same using HTML purely; surely that would be a cumbersome task indeed.

You have now learned how to first slice a template using Photoshop and then code it using Dream Weaver. Congrats your very first template is ready!