02 Mar 06

Site Promotion with DMOZ

In Marketing & PR

For those of you aren’t familiar with it, DMOZ, or the ‘Open Directory Project’, is the largest human edited website directory in existence. As such, a link to your website in the directory could be beneficial for many reasons…

Only the best sites are accepted (in theory)

Unlike your average search engine, sites are only added to DMOZ once they have been approved by an 'editor' - someone who has volunteered to help maintain a given category (or categories). Editors will only approve sites which meet the directory's guidelines which, in a nutshell, are that 'editors should select quality sites and lots of them'. Because of this many net users will look to DMOZ before a standard search engine, which could result in a healthy boost in targeted traffic to your site.

Two (or more) for the price of one

It's not just the odd net user that values the Open Directory - Google like it too. The big G likes it so much that its own 'Google Directory' is an exact copy! In fact, many websites offer variations or exact copies of the directory, as DMOZ.org make their entire database available to download, for free. With search engines giving incoming links a huge amount of importance when they decide who belongs where in their rankings, links from authority sites such as DMOZ and the Google Directory, as well as other DMOZ mirrors, could make a significant difference to your site's search engine rankings.

Where do I sign up?

Submitting your site to the Open Directory is extremely simple, but that doesn't stop a lot of people from getting it wrong. Before submitting your site, read the submission rules carefully to make sure you follow the right procedure. Depending on the category there may be hundreds of other sites in the submission queue and if yours contains a description that reads like marketing spiel or you've picked the wrong category, the editor may just reject the submission.

The other side of the coin

As DMOZ is edited purely by volunteers, there are no guarantees. You can submit the most relevant, well designed, informative site and find that it never gets added. Sometimes it might take over a year for your submission to be accepted. Some people have really thrown their toys out of the pram and accused the Open Directory of being corrupt and even gone to the trouble of starting their own sites on the subject. As far as I'm concerned, it's just the nature of the beast, and complaining won't make any difference.

The fact of the matter is that it takes 2 minutes to submit your site and if you're lucky enough to be accepted (the best way to look at it, in my view) then you could have a long term source of traffic and boosted search engine rankings, and it's free! If you don't get accepted then that still applies - it is free, it didn't cost you anything to try, and it only took 2 minutes. C'est la vie.

Comments & Trackbacks

No comments have been made on this post yet.

Add a Comment

Commenting is not available in this site entry.