For those of you who came in late, dmoz is the Open Directory Project. dmoz is described as the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It also acts as a central data feed for most of the major search engines. The importance of which is not lost on many web marketing people. Getting your site listed on dmoz or at least linked from a site that is on dmoz is a pretty good way of ensuring that you you will be indexed by the major search engines and also included in many smaller directories and search sites.
Anyway I have been trying for ages to get the Internet Guru web site listed under the catagory “Computers: Internet: Web Design and Development: Designers: Full Service”. Though I was certain that the site fitted the critera it just wasn’t being picked up for that catagory. This highlights one the problems with dmoz. If the catagory editor is swamped by submissions or has lost interest in the catagory, your site may not be approved for a long time. Even worse your site may have been rejected.
After many months of waiting I suddenly had a brainwave – why not submit to a less competitive catagory? I found out later that there is nothing overly original about this idea but at the time it seemed a major revelation.
After looking deeper through the directory I settled on the catagory Regional: Oceania: Australia: Victoria: Business and Economy: Internet: Web Design and Development. From an SEO point of view this is a great choice. It has the same Google Page Rank as my orginal choice but contains a much smaller number of outgoing links – thus ensuring a strong flow on of Page Rank to our site.
So I resubmitted the site to the new catagory and to my delight we were listed in days.
And the lessons here?
1. Getting listed in dmoz is good way to ensure you get listed on most search engines. Give it time though. Once you are listed on dmoz it will take a while for the data to flow to the search engines. (Consider paid submissions if you really must be visible yesterday).
2. The big dmoz catagories aren’t always the best.
3. If you’re targeting a regional market then try the regional catagories rather than competing head to head with the big global players.