The Open Directory Project more commonly known as Dmoz is undoubtedly the largest and most popular Internet web directory and also one of the most important directories for you to get your site listed in.
Sadly though, it has become more and more difficult to get your site included, mainly because Dmoz is run by volunteers that are only required to make “one” edit in every three months to remain an editor!
There is no obligation for any editor to work on any specific category or clear any backlog, because of this many of the popular categories have hundreds and in some cases thousands of sites waiting for an editor to review them, include them or delete them and these submissions may have sat there for up to 5 years.
This article offers you a few inside tips about getting your site listed in Dmoz.
Even after your site has sat in the review queue of Dmoz for months or years a reviewing editor will often simply ignore your listing if it is submitted to the wrong category, if you are lucky however the editor will forward it to the correct category; this means that your site is still sitting and still waiting. So let’s first of all tackle how to ensure that you submit your site to the correct category.
Dmoz offers very poor advice about submitting your site to the correct category, what it does say is “Identify the single best category for your site. The Open Directory has an enormous array of subjects to choose from. You should submit a site to the single most relevant category. Sites submitted to inappropriate or unrelated categories may be rejected or removed.” Not really a great deal of help.
The best way is to search on the front page of www.dmoz.org for your product or service, example, a site selling children’s party supplies will give you a result of many sites listed in dmoz.org/Shopping/Children/Parties. Check through the sites already listed and find the most common category and submit your site to that.
OK you have now submitted your site to the best location in The Open Directory Project but this does not help get your site looked at any faster, it just prevents it from being moved from A to B and delaying things.
The secret is to submit your site TWICE, only this time to the area that you live and run your business from as well as to the category that covers your subject. Despite what you may have been told Dmoz will actually allow many sites to be listed in up to 3 categories!
So for example your site that sells children’s party supplies is located in Texas, you have submitted to dmoz.org/Shopping/Children/Parties but you can also submit to dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/Texas/Business_and_Economy/Shopping
The benefit in doing this is that many editors will edit their own locality and want to keep the category tidy and not let submissions hang around for years, example Texas has five permanent editors so the chances of one of them picking up your site and including it is far greater than an editor eventually seeing and taken the trouble to list your site inside dmoz.org/Shopping/Children/Parties. Most if not all locations have editors that have chosen to edit in the area that they live as well as specific subjects.
A word of warning though, the editor will be looking at your site to see if you have a physical address under your contact page or any other page on your site, if they do not find an address that ties in with the area that you have submitted (Texas for example) they will just delete your submission. Even if you don’t want to permanently have your address displayed on your site, I would suggest that you add it until you find Dmoz have listed your site and then remove it if you wish. It is extremely unlikely that an editor will look back at your site for this information once it has been listed.
Being included in the Open Directory Project is a very hit and miss affair but if you double up your chances in this way you stand a greater chance of getting your site included.
