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When most website owners think of Internet directories, if they even consider them at all, they think of them as a way to gain a one-way incoming link. Inclusion in the various Internet directories is rarely viewed as more than a one-time entry event. The goal is to get listed and gain the inbound link, for better or for worse. Traffic from some mainstream directories is often low and seldom considered as part of the equation. The potential of the directory listings as a source of potential link partners is rarely thought of as a strategy at all. Directories have far more possibilities hidden within their listings than is generally thought. Many webmasters, and even some search engine optimization experts, ignore the less obvious value residing in the various categories. By looking beyond the obvious single link and search capabilities of an Internet directory, a website owner has a wealth of potential link partners, waiting to be added. They are easily found in the leading Internet directories and in the many specialized minor directory listings as well. Some of the very useful directories for link research include the Open Directory Project, better known as DMOZ; the Yahoo! Directory; the Google Directory; and the many specialty directories directly related to the searcher's area of business. By utilizing the appropriate strategies, directories are a gold mine of linking partners. They are simply begging to be mined by an enterprising and prospecting webmaster. Selecting the Directories The most obvious Internet directory to start with when beginning a comprehensive link search is the well known DMOZ directory. With its complete category and sub-category classification system, any website owner can find numerous sites within their area of business. If your website is already listed in the DMOZ directory, the first step is to go directly to your own site's category. Within those pages of listings, whether you are in the global or regional category, will be some of your direct competitors. There is no need to contact them for link exchanges if you are concerned about loss of visitor traffic to their sites. If you are not listed in the DMOZ directory, find the category where your site would probably be included. The process remains the same for finding link partners, whether your site is listed or not. On the other hand, if your goal is to build what Google considers a "hub site", link exchanges with competitors are a positive. For purposes of this discussion, however, the goal will be more straightforward link exchanges. We will focus on gaining additional incoming links for their search engine benefit, and on links for attracting extra visitor traffic. Within the selected category, the listed websites are placed in alphabetical order, and the listings may include one, two, or even more than ten pages of sites. The important thing to remember is all of the listed sites are theme and topic related to yours. The same concept can be used in the sub-categories and the higher categories in the same subject area. The listings are generally all related sites thematically. The same procedure can be used for businesses that are related and complementary to yours, like flowers are part of weddings, and therefore make sense for wedding dress sales. The Yahoo! Directory provides a similar opportunity for the website owner. The Yahoo! Directory has many of the same sites listed as DMOZ. That is a given. There are, however, many more sites listed in Yahoo! that are not part of the Open Directory Project. That fact opens up many more possibilities for the webmaster. When you go to the Yahoo! Directory, as with DMOZ, go first to your category if you are already listed. Select the most probable one, if your site is not included. Note that the listings are also in alphabetical order, and may have somewhat different descriptions than the DMOZ directory employs. Use the same procedure as before, and your list of potential linking partners will grow larger. A third important Internet directory is the Google Directory. Using listings supplied by the Open Directory Project, the listings are very similar to those found in DMOZ. Google offers a major and important difference, however. Google orders the results from the highest PageRank listing to the lowest, making your sorting that much easier. Keep in mind that some of the PageRanks on display are possibly out of date, and may not reflect the site's current PageRank. If exchanges, for higher PageRank purposes are important to your site, then the Google directory offers what you seek. As a general rule, don't let PageRank determine your linking partners. It is far more important to make your site helpful for your visitors and customers. Putting Specialty Directories to Work for You The major Internet directories are not the only game in town. In fact, because of their widespread popularity, they might not be the idea link partner hunting ground for everyone. A powerful alternative source of directory link leads is found in the sometimes overlooked specialty directories. Often only representing one industry segment, these directories are populated with businesses possibly interested in links. In fact, many of the included companies might not have been contacted for link partnerships at all. The highly specialized directories for your industry and some small general ones might have the link partners your business seeks. The first step is to search for the specialty and minor directories in the search engines. Enter combinations of "directories" and "your industry" and lists will appear. It won't matter if the directories are paid or free for inclusion, as you are searching for link exchanges. If one of the newly discovered directories is free, however, be certain to get your own website included. After all, a directory is a valuable incoming link too. Be cautious of possible link farms. Whatever you do, make sure your business is not part of one of them. Link farms and other so-called bad neighborhoods are specifically against the guidelines for the search engines. For inclusion of your site, choose only respectable directories. One way to determine a link farm is it will usually require many return links, and links for other sites. Don't participate in such linking schemes. Making the Exchange Offer Properly Simply click on the links, one by one, and examine the sites carefully. Know something about the site. Look for contact information and find the webmaster's name if possible. In your e-mail to the prospective exchange partner, be certain to offer some strong indication that you have actually visited the site in question. Tell your prospective partner that you have already linked their site and you feel your site would be beneficial to their site visitors as well. A really good idea is to tell the webmaster of a part of their site that you found especially interesting and informative. Place a link on your own site to the sites you have decided to contact first, prior to any requests. That is simply proper linking etiquette. It also displays your professionalism to the recipient who is probably tired of link exchange spam. Be sure to always visit the site as well. It is never a good idea to link partner with a site you wouldn't feel comfortable recommending to all of your customers. Your business and personal reputations are at stake. Don't threaten to remove the link to their site if they fail to reciprocate. If the site was interesting and helpful enough to offer a link partnership, it should be one you intend to keep, as a permanent link. Be sure to know your potential partner sites well. As an additional policy, maintain a chart of all of the sites contacted for exchanges, and the dates and e-mail details of those requests and the results. Good records will also prevent you from constantly contacting the same webmaster, over and over, as a result of having forgotten their response. Far too many people send e-mails without having visited the site at all. Don't be part of that group. Know your potential partnership sites and their benefits to both your business and that of your visitor traffic. Benefits to Your Website The use of directories for finding linking partners will benefit your website and your online business more than employing the commonly used random approach. Most website owners do not have a plan for finding link exchanges that make sense for their site. A link only has real value to your visitors, if it has something in common with the overall theme and interest of your website. The search engines, especially Google, reward incoming links more highly if they are related to the topic of the receiving web page. Links from similarly themed pages carry more weight with Google's algorithm, than those which have little in common with the landing page. Specialty directories that include your site within their listings are already themed for your topics. The other sites listed there will also be themed for your site. For more bang for the link buck, keep your links related to your web page's topics and themes. The page will receive a bit of a Google PageRank boost and a much higher level of incoming link popularity. Combined with a strong and properly focused anchor link text program, the added links will help to boost a site higher in the search engine rankings. Conclusion Directories are an excellent source of theme related link partners for any website. If the directory used for the search is a major one such as DMOZ, the Yahoo! Directory, or the Google Directory, sites with your main topics are readily categorized. Finding potential linking partners is very easy, using the major directories. The smaller specialized directories provide unique link partnership opportunities, available mainly to those in your industry. Their included links are very closely themed to your site. While searching the various directories, don't forget to get your site included in their listings as well. And by using the many Internet directories, combined with professional link exchange requests, you can vastly increase the number of links to your website.

Directories are everywhere, on any topic imaginable. As SEOs, we even promote submissions to link directories as a good method of getting backlinks. But with more and more link directories popping up all over the web, are we somehow helping to promote a new type of link farm? A few years ago, link farms were easy to find. Today, you rarely ever see them. One could assume that the link farm syndrome has been cured. Or has it? In a time when it seems you cannot escape web spam, spammers are finding more and better ways at creating the unwanted junk. Search engine engineers work hard to filter out such garbage, so that the search engine results are relevant to a user’s query. And while spammers seem to always be either one step ahead of the search engines, or able to exploit holes in algorithms, search engines work hard at fixing these things so that we have a better search experience. However, we are still bombarded on every side with it. We get it in our email, in our blogs, in our forums, and even in our link exchanges. I want to examine a particular aspect of linking strategies that seems to be the target of spam filters lately: the link directory. A link farm is a large group of web pages created that contain hyperlinks to one another or a specific other page. Link farms are normally created by programs, rather than by human beings. They can also be defined as sites created solely for search engine ranking purposes that consist almost entirely of a long list of unrelated links. These types of pages are penalized by almost all search engines. While “link farm” is an older term used to describe those types of sites; the term can certainly apply to link directories. Some of these programs are nothing more than random links on a page and really do not help one’s popularity or backlink value. These most definitely can be considered spamming. Many webmasters understand the importance of having backlinks. Yet some do not understand the difference between high quality links and poor quality links. I have to caution many clients about the importance of being able to decline a link exchange request. Why? There are several reasons for my caution. Caution, Links May Be Dangerous 1. You can receive penalties for linking to a site that is considered spam. Think of it in terms of reputation. Google uses the Hilltop algorithmic principle. Hilltop emphasizes the voting power of what it considers “authority sites"; this involves analyzing the links between pages on the web on the assumption that pages on the topic link to each other, and authoritative pages tend to point to other authoritative pages. In order to build your good, you must not have associations with shady characters. Being linked with spam sites, or other sites that use black-hat SEO would probably inflict negative results upon your reputation. The same can be true for websites. If your website is associated with poorly reputed sites, then their bad reputation can certainly reflect on you, and your search engine positioning. 2. Linking to irrelevant sites does not help you in any way, and in fact may hurt you. No one is exactly sure how a search engine ranks relevancy, but you certainly don’t want to give them a reason to consider your site irrelevant. In an extreme case, linking to too many irrelevant sites might give search engines the impressions that your directory is nothing more than a link farm. The consequences of this are not worth the risk of being banned in the search engines, all for mere hope that it might bring you a little questionable value. 3. There seems to be little value in creating a link exchange with some websites. There is much controversy among SEOs, webmasters, and designers over whether there is any value at all in reciprocal linking. It’s a lot of work and effort to maintain a link exchange, especially in a directory form, as well as trying to find good websites to link with. Some webmasters simply do not participate in reciprocal linking programs at all; instead focusing on receiving one-way links only. I think the jury is still out on this one, however. Still, the theory may be sound: creating link exchanges with blogs or forums (sites which are particularly open to spamming techniques) retain little value at all. More Reasons for Linking Caution 4. Too many irrelevant links can be seen as spam. While you don’t see many link farms anymore, they do still exist. In fact, they can take the form of a link directory. If you don’t have organized, clear, and distinct categories of links, then your directory can easily be determined to be a link farm, especially if you have more than 50 links already on a page. Having a link farm on your website will be one of the fastest ways to get your website banned in the search engines. 5. You can lose PageRank or even be black-listed for linking to a spam site. The consequences of linking to black-hat websites can be severe. “TrustRank” is a term recently trademarked by Google. In talking about TrustRank, Google says, “Web spam pages use various techniques to achieve higher-than-deserved rankings in a search engine's results. While human experts can identify spam, it is too expensive to manually evaluate a large number of pages. Instead, we propose techniques to semi-automatically separate reputable, good pages from spam. We first select a small set of seed pages to be evaluated by an expert. Once we manually identify the reputable seed pages, we use the link structure of the web to discover other pages that are likely to be good. In this paper we discuss possible ways to implement the seed selection and the discovery of good pages. We present results of experiments run on the World Wide Web indexed by AltaVista and evaluate the performance of our techniques. Our results show that we can effectively filter out spam from a significant fraction of the web, based on a good seed set of less than 200 sites.” In essence, TrustRank is a way to cut down on spam and filter out content that is not relevant to the searcher in order to bring them results they really want. What this could mean to you in the near future is that linking to a non-trusted site would deem your site untrustworthy as well. It is so important to be careful to whom you link. Even without TrustRank, which has yet to be used by Google, your PageRank can still be affected. A company called Traffic Power was a notorious SEO firm that employed various black-hat SEO techniques, like doorway pages and JavaScript spam; so much so that the company and almost all of their clients were banned from the search engines. We have also seen sites that have linked to such banned sites lose their PageRank and positions in the results pages. Directory Tips There would be several instances where you might have a good reason to incorporate a link directory into your website. You should never have more than 50 outbound links on a page, as this dilutes the page’s value. If you have a variety of links and they are not all related, you will need to categorize them together so they are relevant to each other. A link directory might be the solution. Another reason you might have a directory on your website is to generate revenue. In these cases, it would be advisable for you to have a link directory, but there are some tips you should be aware of. 1. Use clear, concise titles and descriptions for your categories. This will not only help those who wish to submit their links to a category know exactly where they should suggest their URL; it also gives search engine spiders a fair understanding what that particular category is about, and how to measure the relevancy of the links in it. Use a directory script that utilizes title and description meta tags, or breadcrumb navigation. 2. Research sites that ask you for a link exchange. It is becoming more and more important to know just who you are linking to. Take note of the location of your reciprocal link, the site’s and the page’s PageRank, and scan the source code of the page to spot possible spam practices that could get the site into trouble in the future. 3. Be able to say “NO” to a link exchange request. If you cannot see the relevance of the site requesting the exchange to your site or you feel the site would not be a good representation of your values, then it is recommended that you decline the request. 4. Try to keep links and categories relevant to the content of your website. If your website is about race cars, then it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to have a category for bridal accessories in your link directory. More Directory Tips 5. You can’t be all things to everyone. Don’t try to include a broad spectrum of categories in your directory. It is one thing for a directory like DMOZ’s Open Directory to have categories ranging from kids toys to barbecue supplies to furnace repair companies, because they’ve built their reputation as an all-encompassing type of directory: that’s all they are. If you have a website about the care of kittens, you can’t be DMOZ and try to keep your site relevant to kittens. 6. Clean out your link directory on occasion. Even if you’ve already approved a link exchange with a website in the past, it never hurts to follow up on these links. Many times, you’ll find that a site seems to be a good choice for a link exchange, only to find out in a few months that the site is no longer found in the search engines because they’ve been banned due to black-hat SEO practices. The site might have gone under, or moved, so it’s a good idea for you to remove these dead links as well. As search engines implement more filters, there is greater risk that even links from legitimate directories are being filtered out, or not being credited to your backlink score. Many directories are link farms and additionally some search engines may even be filtering out some of the links from some of the legitimate directories, because those links appear random, and there is no way for a search engine to tell the difference between this new form of link farm and the old. There is no substitute for relevant, quality one-way links from well reputed sites. Do I think the link farm has been replaced by the link directory? Yes and no. There are many great directories out there. The Open Directory, or DMOZ, is a good example of a directory that carries fairly heavy weight in the search engines. Google, especially, pulls a lot of information from the Open Directory. But even a link from this directory doesn’t carry as much weight as it used to. Most search engines, which include Google, Yahoo, and MSN, use backlinks to calculate a website’s relevance. It makes complete sense that if links are that important, that you should be cautious about which sites you link to and which sites you choose to have linking to you. The link farm may look obsolete, but in many respects it has only changed its façade. The link directories are not bad things in all respects, but I think they are being more closely watched to make sure they don’t present opportunities for spam. All it takes is a few bad apples, and the search engines will throw out the whole bunch: yours included. Keep your links relevant, and be picky about who you link to, and your link directory may just hold some value; if not for search engines, then to bring qualified traffic to your website.

In the wake of a lawsuit an online company named KinderStart filed against Google for dropping its placement in the search engine results pages (SERPs), one has to wonder just what these people are thinking; they’re suing a now-giant corporate web presence like Google when, ultimately, it is not really Google’s fault that the website has fallen off so drastically. One only has to search through the site in question to see that it is nothing more than a complex link directory. If you aren't up to date on the news, read this report on it. It is my professional opinion that the link directory has been dying a slow and painful death for many, many months now, as if it was inoculated with some terrible and terminal disease. Actually, I’ve been saying it for about a year, and like my opinion of reality TV shows, enough is enough! I understand that I might anger a few with this article, but because I feel strongly enough about what I am going to say, I am willing to risk angering some in order to hopefully enlighten others. First of all, one has to initially wonder what made the link directory such a hot commodity in the first place. It was my honest opinion that the issues of link trading were vastly different than they are right now at this moment in time, and at one point the link directory was an important aspect of the Web. Gone are the days where one webmaster emailed another and said, “Hey, give me a link on your site, and I’ll give you a link on mine.” But then someone figured out that this was just taking way too long, and decided to automate the entire process, and spawned the dreaded link farms. It didn’t take search engines like Google and Yahoo to figure out the main reason behind link farms was to inflate their link numbers and propel them to the top of the SERPs, so this practice was curbed pretty quickly. It soon became necessary for folks to then find another way around the link farm. But in the process of this, people forgot why they were doing it in the first place. Let me pause here in my rhetoric to assure you that I don’t think all link directories are semblances of link farms, as I do not; nor do I believe that all link directories are evil creatures that deserve to die. However, the few of you out there that created link directories to give the web surfer many options to find what they are looking for are, unfortunately, unnecessary anymore. Let’s look at a few reasons why. Link directories are obsolete First, we have better search technology. Link directories were originally formulated online in order to give people a better way of finding what they needed on the web. But given that the technology of search algorithms has greatly improved, and is still improving nearly daily, it is no small thing that the directory would become one of the casualties of better search engines. Second, people are far better at surfing the web than they used to be. Web users are more educated about the usefulness of the internet search engine, and most people with internet access use them. People who said they would never use the internet are now not only emailing their grandchildren in Nova Scotia, but are participating in discussion boards and chat rooms and playing Mah Jongg online; it is those same people that have found the usefulness of search engines delivering exactly what they need to find. Third, it is getting easier for people to find what they need online through a search engine, because dial up connections are the fastest they’ve ever been, and with more and more people moving to broadband internet, people get to spend more time searching and less time waiting. Perhaps you are following me up to this point and can see where my logic comes from; perhaps you can even understand that the link directory is fading away as a natural result of not being necessary anymore. So why am I calling it “Link Directory Genocide” if it seems to just be dying of natural causes? While genocide is technically “the systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group,” I apply it to the link directory loosely because, well, it is being euthanized, so to speak. I certainly do not wish to offend anyone, so bear with me during my analogy. In the last Google update, many link directories got hit hard; hard enough where any traffic was essentially…well, killed off. In fact, it is my strong belief that Google terminated many of these non-essential directories in the SERPs with the latest filter purposely. For the most part, directories contain no content, many contain only a myriad of links for sites that in turn link to more sites, and basically take the visitor on a wild goose chase. Certainly, this is not what was intended for the Internet. And, unfortunately, link directories as an entire culture are going to find themselves wiped out and at the bottom of the dung-heap before too long. So why is Google fed up enough with the link directories to want to exterminate them? A hyperlinking analogy Let’s try to think of this in perspective as Google perhaps may very well view it. The Internet is like a great big road map, with links being the roads, and websites being the towns, cities, landmarks, and great historical places to visit. Let’s say you decide you want to learn about the “women of World War II”, and you ask Google for directions by doing a search, because you want to be taken down the best road that will take you directly to the place these women reside so that you may hear their story. You click on a link that has been returned in the SERPs; you may find this link like a set of directions, and set out to find these heroic women you want to know so much about. You would be exceedingly frustrated and irritated, however, to find that the place to where you had been directed not only doesn’t have what you are looking for, but also has a completely new set of directions for you to follow, like getting a scrap of paper found during a scavenger hunt with nothing more than a clue. This forces you to set out on the road again. Imagine your dismay when you finally reach your destination again only to find a sign that tells you that you’ll have to take another exasperating new course to your destination. It’s enough to make you throw your hands in the air in disgust and just give up and go home. This is how people feel when they search the web only to find a set of sites with nothing more than a bunch of links. Then they have to scour around for the entirely new set of directions, which may in turn lead to a whole new site of nothing more than just more links. In Google’s eyes, this makes a site not relevant to what the searcher had in mind when they clicked on that link in Google’s SERPs, even though some might consider their collection a set of useful links. And who will the searcher blame when he or she cannot find what they are looking for in the SERPs? Why the person who gave them the original set of directions, of course. It is those sites that have been getting the axe, burned at the stake and otherwise dispatched in the SERPs rather regularly, reminiscent of the Dark Ages, complete with morbid executions that seem nothing short of barbaric. Perhaps Google hoped they would simply fade away in the face of newer and better search technology, and when that didn’t work, felt they had no choice but to take a far more aggressive stance. I think that many of these link directories had been steadily losing ground for many months. Some of those webmasters had enough sense to evaluate why their sites were on the decline, and change their sites into something redeeming that may be what searchers really want. Those people are not to whom I am speaking. It is to those KinderStarts of the Internet to whom I refer. You cannot expect to forever keep your 10 million viewers and never update your site, or not provide content for your visitors and still expect to be a valuable resource for long. If anyone is to blame, it is your selves. So while I can argue that Google may be performing Link Directory Genocide, it is really you, O Link Bearer, who is actually committing Link Directory Suicide. And the only crime here, ladies and gentlemen, is resting on your laurels in the Internet world. It is almost shameful to blame Google for your own lack of foresight. What you can do about it “So now what should I do?” you ask. Well, that’s a difficult question to answer, and it would certainly depend on what you intend to offer to your audience. If you are truly about helping to collect information that will be valuable to surfers, then by all means do so, but make sure you add quality (and relevant) content to your pages, and not just a bunch of meaningless links. Further, concentrate heavily on achieving high quality inbound links from reputable websites. For those of you who have tried to get those precious links, then you know exactly how hard it is to do so. No one ever said it would be easy, and anything worth achieving usually isn’t. I want to pause once again to give you a word of advice: this article is not intended to scare you away from sharing outbound links, or to keep you away from linking to other websites. After all, with the great roadmap of the internet, if you take away your ability to link to other relevant sites, then you remove the opportunity for a search engine spider to crawl among sites effectively. Search engine spiders need to be able to not only easily crawl from page to page on one website, but also from one website to another. (In another article, I will talk about why I feel being stingy with links may end up hurting you in the long run.) I find it important to emphasize again and again how crucial it is to provide your website to people, and not try to please the search engines, or exist solely for the purpose of PageRank. Ultimately, Google is as fickle as my cat, and no one knows what Google wants next or which way it will choose to swing the Reaper’s sickle. You could spend your time running in circles, chasing your tail whenever Google makes a major change, or you can sit back, learn, and understand what Google really wants for the web: relevant sites with valuable content that will make people WANT to search for your site. My advice is not to try to please Google, but rather to please your audience instead. This is what divides the good marketers from those who haven’t a clue, and by catering to your audience you will keep your website away from the executioner’s axe. These words may seem especially harsh to those who have great directories of great links to great sites, but there comes a time when the horse and buggy must be replaced by the automobile. Times are a-changin’, and either we roll with the punches, or we will get left behind; battered, broken, and trampled on the mat. My suggestion to you is to have valuable and unique content so that not only Google stays the execution, but so that your site visitors actually have something to read, and want to keep coming back to it. After all, it is the content to be read that makes the Internet a useful tool at all.

Hope you enjoyed our articles about Web Directories, Web Directory News and Web Directory Listings. From today we are going to post more articles and news on Website Submission Help, Website Submission Tips and Website Submission Tricks. Why you may want to read them? Supposing you've created your website, made it pretty and easy to use, so now all you need to do is sit back and wait for your customers to find you? Well, unless you are sending out psychic invitations to your customers directly, you are going to need to submit your website to several search engines. Hope the following articles will help you understand the ins and outs of submitting your website to different search engines.

The Open Directory Project, also called the ODP or DMOZ, is probably the single most important internet directory. Its listings are used by Google, and by many other search engines and directories large and small, all over the internet. Everyone talks about getting their site listed in DMOZ, but not everyone knows what to do about it. Here's some help.The Open Directory Project, also called the ODP or DMOZ, is probably the single most important internet directory. Its listings are used by Google, and by many other search engines and directories large and small, all over the internet. If you want to achieve top rankings in the search engines, you simply must be included in the DMOZ Directory. Google considers the Open Directory Project to be so important, that inclusion in their influential Google Directory depends on it. Inclusion in DMOZ is almost a requirement for high rankings in the Google search results as well. What is So Special About the Open Directory Project (DMOZ), Anyway? DMOZ is an entirely volunteer edited directory, where every site is examined by an editor for suitability. To get a listing in DMOZ, is to have several legs up, in the race to the top of the search results. While there are a number of other important directories that are volunteer run, including JoeAnt, Gimpsy, GoGuides, and Zeal, Google places special emphasis on DMOZ. You simply must get your site included in the Open Directory Project. How to get your website listed in DMOZ To begin your inclusion quest, go to the DMOZ web site, found at http://www.dmoz.org. Finding the Right DMOZ Directory Category The first step to a listing, is to check the various directory categories, and find the appropriate one for your site. As you can see, there are a lot of categories, and sub-categories, and sub-sub- categories. Be very thorough here, as submitting your site to the wrong category can result in very long waits, and possibly even rejection. Don't be afraid to spend a little time searching through the various options. I can't stress this enough. You have to submit to the correct category for your site. One way to ensure you are in the right one, is to search through it. Look at the other sites listed there. If you don't see any similar sites to yours, it's time to check out another category. If you see some of your main competitors in that section, you will know you have found the right one. The time spent searching for the proper submission category will pay off for you. You are already well on your way. Making Your DMOZ Directory Submission When you have narrowed your target to the most appropriate category, go to it, and click on "add URL". Be absolutely certain to read the instructions very carefully. They are not merely a suggestion. They are an absolute requirement. Be sure to submit just your home page to only one category. Multiple page or category submissions will likely be treated as spam, and your site rejected. While there are occasional and exceptional sites and categories, that will accept your site more than once, they are rare. Don't worry about it. It's best to concentrate on one category, and get included, than attempt multiple submissions and find yourself rejected. Avoid Automated Submission Software Don't even consider using any automated submission software for DMOZ submissions. Automated submissions are expressly against DMOZ policy. They will always be rejected. Continued use of automated submissions may get your site permanently banned from the directory. All category submissions must be done by hand! Writing your website description You will be asked to write a brief description of your website. This is not the place to be flowery and biased. Words like "best ever." "greatest," "finest site," and so on, will be removed and your description rewritten. Be as objective as possible. Don't fall for the temptation to pack your descriptions full of keywords. The editors will spot that transparent attempt at keyword stuffing immediately. If the editors think your description is too promotional, they will certainly change it on you. You can be sure of one thing: you probably won't like their description. Your site may even be rejected entirely. One way to be sure your site description will be accepted as written is to treat it objectively. Write your description the way an outsider would word it. Simply describe the content of the site and some features that benefit the user. A straightforward and honest description will find the most success. A good description is much less likely to be changed. Take your time here, as it will take a lot longer to get a bad description changed, than to write a good one from the start! Completing Your DMOZ Directory Submission Once you have found the proper category, and have written a good useful description, it's time to submit your site. Before you press the Add URL button, make sure you have checked and double checked your submission for typos in the URL and description. A tiny error there could get your site removed from the lineup, or sent back to you for revision. That means a return to the back of the line too! Be sure to write down the name of the category that received your submission. Take note of the category editor's name and the date you submitted your site. You will need that information a lot later, if you have to check on the status of your site submission. The editors will expect it. If the category you submitted to has no editor listed, don't despair. Your submission will still be examined by a more senior category editor What to do while you wait for the DMOZ decision Your site has finally been submitted. Now what? Since the website submissions are accepted on a first come, first served basis, you wait. The waiting period can last anywhere from one week to six long agonizing months. Whatever you do, don't decide to resubmit your site. At best, your submission will be moved to the back of the line, where the waiting period starts all over again. At worst, your site may even be rejected for spamming. Resist the urge to resubmit your site. While the waiting period can seem like an eternity, you simply have to wait it out. Some categories have a huge backlog of submitted sites. Others lack editors to keep up with the volume of new sites. By having carefully selected your category, you are at least certain you don't have to worry about being in the wrong one. Improve Your Site and Content While You Wait In the meantime, you won't hear from DMOZ one way or the other. Keep checking their site each week for results. Keep updating and adding content to your website. The more original content your site contains, the more useful it will be viewed by the volunteers. The purpose of the DMOZ Directory is to be a high quality resource for the user. The editors will like your site a lot better, if you have a lot of pages of information. Your chances of approval will go way up. Be sure you have no pages "under construction," as the editors will reject any sites that aren't ready for prime time. If you still have pages that are not completed, either remove them until they are ready for the public, or finish adding their content. Whatever you do, get rid of any "under construction" or similar red flag pages, that indicate your site is not fully operational. Another important thing to do is to check over your site content for typos. While some keyboarding errors might not doom your site to rejection, having a professional looking site will certainly enhance your chances of success. Good professionally done sites, that feature a lot of original and useful content, are almost always accepted. Help for Affiliate Site Aubmissions to DMOZ If you have an "affiliate sales" website, be absolutely certain your site contains several pages of useful articles for your visitors. A site simply consisting of links and banners will almost always be rejected. Good relevant content is a must. You must distinguish your affiliate site from the thousands of other affiliate sites out there. The way to do that is to add content. DMOZ requires original content. A single sales page doesn't qualify. To add content, you could write reviews of the products you offer. You might want to discuss the problems your products and services address. Writing about industry news related to your products and services will also be helpful to your submission. Followup with DMOZ Editors If you sent your submission a few months ago, and can't stand the wait, you can contact the category editor about your site's status. Editors can be accessed directly through their Feedback link. Be sure to have that submission date and category information you wrote down handy. They will ask for it. They want to be sure you submitted to the proper category, and that you have given their volunteers sufficient time to look over your website. A better route, however, is to ask a polite question on the DMOZ public forum. You don't have to be registered to read the forum, but you must register (free) to post a question. As always, be sure to read and follow the posting guidelines. Once again, you will be asked for the date of submission, category submitted to, and the category editor. Are you seeing a trend here' Good records of your contact with DMOZ are a must. While at the DMOZ forum, you can also ask some questions about their requirements and regulations. The editors will try to help you in every way they can. While they can't specifically give you a date for your inclusion, they can let you know if you are in the proper category. Wrapping up your DMOZ submission If you followed all of the proper steps, your site will appear in the DMOZ Directory. As an added bonus, the DMOZ listings are collected into the prestigious Google Directory. They are also found in many smaller directories around the internet, providing your website with some much needed backlinks. Your site might just get a boost in PageRank, and in searches for your most important keywords as well. Happy submitting. It's well worth the effort!

For a guide to be comprehensive, it cannot but be lengthy. For the hardened veterans of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) struggles, there may be only a few surprises here, but as it is my intention to make this guide accessible to relative newcomers to this complex and rapidly evolving subject, I hope that the thoroughness of the exposition will be appreciated. Directories: Then and Now It now seems to be lost in the mist of time, but way back in 1995 (and for several good years since) the first site most users turned to when trying to find anything on the net was a directory -- Yahoo! Supported by such popularity, Yahoo grew from strength to strength and became the 'definitive' guide to the web. A site that wasn't listed there was as good as non-existent. The phenomenal success of Yahoo provided a blue print for many sites. Hundreds, if not thousands, of directory sites were created, copying the basic formula: Human editors that scout the Internet, find sites and categorize them. The situation now cannot be more different. Search Engines, and not Directories, rule the web. Although some of the better known are still thriving (like dmoz.org), many have closed (like goto.com). The rest are valiantly trying to find their place in the virtual world and fight for visitors and recognition. The decline of Directories led some commentators to maintain that they are, at best, complimentary to Search Engines. Other would go as far as claiming that they are just relics of the past, better left alone and ignored. On that background, it is with some amazement that one hears every so often of yet another directory being launched. It seems that the enormity of the challenge to categorize millions upon millions of sites has an irresistible attraction for some people... From the site owner and webmaster perspective, we need to be absolutely clear about the benefits we can derive from being listed in a Directory. Why submit to a Directory? There are two major reasons for submitting to Directories: Targeted traffic Link popularity Clearly, the same benefits can be derived from a link from just about any site -- not just from a directory. However, there are some significant differences between the two link sources: Directories have only one 'purpose in life': to provide links to other sites. Directories are an established source of 'authority' in regard to various subject matters. Being listed in them serves as testimony to the site's 'worth'. It is much easier and simpler to be listed in directories than in subject specific sites (not forgetting the fact that there may be a conflict of interest issue!). Perhaps we should first review the concept of 'Directory', understand the exact difference from Search Engine and get to know the various types of directories - and what advantages each one has. What is a Directory? Many users don't know the difference between a Directory and a Search Engine, and (quite frankly) they actually don't care. This is not surprising, as most sites that started as a Directory, incorporate Search Engine results (like Yahoo) and most Search Engines also use data from directories (like Google). To the uninitiated, it all looks the same. However, for web masters and site owners understanding the distinction between the two is vital. In my opinion, the only difference nowadays is what I call 'the building block': Search Engines use a web page as their building block, while directories use the web site. To illustrate, if the web was a library, then Directories would be a catalog of books, while the Search Engines would be the index of the books. Much like catalogs, there are many ways to organize or categorize web sites. Although many sites have adopted the Yahoo method, others have pioneered different approaches. Types of Directories Human Edited (categories) This is the 'traditional' directory. It is the most prestigious, as each listed site is 'hand picked' and reviewed by a human editor. The assumption is that the editor is an 'expert' in his/her field and will select for inclusion only appropriate sites. Such directories usually have very clear and stringent acceptance rules, which ensure the quality of the search results. Invariably, the Directory is comprised of categories to which sites are 'assigned'. This type of Directory is relatively hard to maintain, as it is labor intensive and hence expensive. That also explains why many such directories are using volunteers to do the work. Notable examples of Human Edited Directories are Yahoo, Dmoz, Joeant and Gimpsy, but there are many more. There is no doubt that this is the most important type to submit your site to. Only the scrutiny of an independent human reviewer can ensure the quality and suitability of a web site to a given category. User categorized The Directory is structured in a very similar way as the Edited Directory, but it is the user's decision as to the best category to place the site in. While this is quite attractive for the Directory Owner (the users do the 'hard work') as well as the Site Owner (freedom to place the site in any category), the search results may be far from satisfactory. One such Directory is Websquash. You may get benefits from registering in such a directory, but make sure you consider all the relevant aspects, as outlined in the next chapters. User classified Sites are classified by keywords, entered by the Site Owner in the Meta Tags of the home page. The attraction here is that the site is classified (potentially) by many keywords and the process is fully automatic (low maintenance). While easy to register, the sorting algorithm has very little to go by, hence the position of the site in the search results doesn't mean much. Moreover, should you choose popular keywords you have little chance of being found due to the number of sites competing with you. On the other hand, selecting a rare combination of keywords suffers from the obvious problem of the minuscule number of searchers using that combination. One of the better known examples is ExactSeek, which enjoys significant popularity. It's attraction may be related to the use of the Alexa ranking, which measures the site's popularity, as a primary sorting criterion of the search results. Independently classified Instead of letting the Site Owner decide which keywords to use for finding his site, this type of directory allows every user to determine the relevancy of keywords. This latest addition to the Directory family harnesses the public vote to examine and determine relevancy of keywords to sites. Each user may choose to rate a (random) site and voice his/her opinion of the suitability of specific keywords to that site. The best example for such a site is Netnose. Due to the democratic process, it is highly likely that relevancy will be good. However, for such a site to achieve prominence requires a larger number of users willing to donate their time and effort to that rating activity. So far, that doesn't seem to have happened. Pay Per Click (PPC) While technically PPC Directories are of the User Classified type, their business model implies some significant characteristics that Site Owners should be aware of: A link from a PPC is never a direct or simple link. Hence, being listed in a PPC Directory will never help to increase Link Popularity with Search Engines. A link from a PPC Directory remains in place only as long as the user's account is cash positive. PPC Directories try to maximize their revenues by encouraging Site Owners to bid for as many keywords as they can, even those that are only remotely related to their site's business. In short, you are welcome to use PPC Directories and buy traffic to your site via that route, but for the purpose of a link campaign, PPC Directories cannot be relied on at all! Directories as traffic source What is 'targeted traffic'? As mentioned in the preface, Directories are no longer a primary source of traffic. They are, however, an excellent source of targeted traffic. Even with the advancement of Search Engine technology, the keyword based search method, common to all search engines, is still far from perfect. That is - many search results do not actually match the user's requirements. Thus, although Search Engines are bound to be higher in the web site logs when counting 'referrals', many of those visitors will NOT become 'customers', as they had a different requirement when they conducted the search. In the SEO terminology, the ratio between customers and visitors is known as the 'conversion rate'. Ideally, a site would aspire to have a conversion rate of 1.0 (every visitor becomes a customer), but this is obviously never achieved. Thus, it is not enough to simply 'count' the number of visitors. One must also look at the 'conversion rate'. For example, if one source of traffic sends 1000 visitors/day with a conversion rate of 1% and another sends only 100 visitors/day with a conversion rate of 20% - the latter provides TWICE as many 'customers' as the former. We can say that the second source provides better 'targeted traffic'. As classification is the critical activity and purpose of every Directory, a lot of effort and thought is directed to the creation, maintenance and updates of the category 'tree'. The purpose, obviously, is to provide an intuitive and precise category structure. Are you in any doubt as to the nature of sites found in this DMOZ category? Top: Games: Role playing: World Building: Created Worlds: Science Fiction Or the following Gimpsy category? I want to > Play > games > role playing > Sci-Fi It is therefore safe to assume that users who trail through either Directory structure will have a very clear idea of what to expect from sites found there. Such matching of content with user expectation guarantees that the conversion rate of visitors from Directories will be significantly better than standard Search Engines. In summary: Even though Directories provide a far lower level of traffic compared to Search Engines, the quality of that traffic is superior. If 'conversion rate' is a meaningful concept for your site, you would be wise to consider Directories as traffic source. How to tell which directories are better traffic generators? Don't take their word for it Traditionally, Directories do not publish traffic generated by them. What little data is published suffers from two main problems: It is NOT independently verified It relates only to traffic the directory has received - not traffic it has generated While the first point is self-explanatory, the second needs further clarification. To illustrate, one often hears Directories declaring that they has so and so many thousands or millions of searches. Even if it is true, which we cannot verify, what does it mean in terms of clicks? If the search results are particularly bad, only a small fraction of the searches will result in a click to a listed site. If not PPC based, there is little incentive for the Directory to develop the elaborate and time consuming programs and database structures that will allow it to correctly record all outgoing traffic. Thus, even if they were willing to publish such data - they may simply not have it available! In short, the Directories themselves cannot be relied on for relevant and independently verified information. Alexa ranking Site owners and webmasters have therefore no alternative but to resort to second hand inference. The widely cited Alexa index is the most notable attempt to measure 'traffic level'. Alexa 'knows' about user's activity only if the user has downloaded and installed the Alexa toolbar. The 'self selecting' nature of the user population sample, which uses the toolbar, led many people to argue that the results are biased. Although Alexa registered many millions of downloads of its toolbar, there is no way of knowing how many of them are being used. It is also fairly easy to show that some of the sites that rank very high cannot possibly be truly that popular. (See list of top 100 sites here.) It is worth noting that Alexa provides historical data too, of up to 2 years back. You may wish to consult that information, as it can be a real eye opener. For example, you may discover that a low ranking site is simply very new -- and the last month shows a remarkable increase in traffic. On the other hand, you may also find sites that while still ranking high have lost market share in the last few months, and may be on the decline slope. As an illustration, see the DMOZ graph. It is common knowledge that it takes very little effort to pull a site into the 100,000 and better ranking range. It is also acknowledged that it is practically impossible to artificially boost a site's ranking below the 1000 mark. To make it easy, we'll divide the Alexa rank to 'bands'. Please remember that a 'high rank' is represented by lower numbers, and vice versa! 1 - 1000: Heavy weight, highly visible and influential, with excellent traffic generating potential. 1,001 - 10,000: Solid presence and good traffic generating potential. 10,001 - 100,000: Site has some presence, but is relatively a minor player. 100,001 and lower: Site is virtually an unknown. Unlikely to generate any traffic at all. Please note - those bands are artificial. It is imperative not to be 'mesmerized' by the Alexa ranking and to attach too much significance to what may be, in reality, just a reflection of 'sampling error'. To overcome this 'myopic' view of the Alexa ranking, you are highly advised to use 25% as the margins of error. In other words, a site with an Alexa rank of 10,000 is indistinguishable from sites ranking from 7,500 to 12,500 and a site which ranks 5,000 is effectively equivalent to a site anywhere in the 3,750 to 6,250 rank range. Secondary Reference There is another way to gage potential for traffic, which we will call here 'secondary reference'. A 'secondary reference' is when a user looks up a term in a Search Engine, say Google, and finds an entry of a Directory page indexed under that term. Should the user click on that entry and visit the Directory, he/she would be faced with several sites listed there, and if appropriate, the user may well click on the Directory listed site and visit it. In other words, the user did not go to the Directory in the first place, but was 'directed' to it from a search engine. There is no simple way to determine the likelihood of 'secondary reference' traffic from a Directory. But the following factors are bound to play a role: To be found in a Search Engine, the pages of the Directory must first be indexed by it. This is sometimes referred to as 'Search Engine Saturation'. The more pages indexed - the greater the likelihood of being found. The higher the PR of the home page of the Directory, the bigger the chance of pages from it ranking highly in search results (at least in Google). The larger the number of back links the Directory has, the higher the likelihood of users arriving at the Directory for searching purposes from other sites. In contrast with the simplicity offered by the Alexa ranking, 'secondary reference' cannot be easily quantified, and must therefore remain mostly intuitive and indicative. Site's rank The final element you should consider relates to the site's position (or rank) in its category. Most people are aware that the position of a site in the Search Engine results pages is critical. That is -- if your site is not found in the first 2-3 pages (say 30 sites), you will not get any traffic from that search phrase. Few people are aware that the same logic also applies to Directories. For example, Gimpsy claims that nearly 70% of all the click-throughs were generated by the first 10 sites in each category (see their FAQ). Indeed, there is no reason to believe that users will visit page after page of the same category, unless they are looking for something really unique. Thus, you are more likely to get traffic from a Directory if your site is among the first in its category. If a Directory gives you no control over your position, you are at the mercy of their sorting method. Whenever you are given some freedom (in return for payment, reciprocal promotion or other arrangement), it may be well worth your time to investigate, and if appropriate, take further action. Directories as Link Partners The magic of Link Popularity While traditional Directories are edited by humans, Search Engines are pure computational sites. The billions of pages now held in the Search Engines database render human intervention impractical. From the gathering of web pages using 'robots' or 'crawlers', through their indexing of that information and finally the ranking of those pages in the search results -- is all done by software and computation. The first two stages (assembling and indexing) are relatively simple, but the third (ranking) presents a much higher challenge. How would the Search Engine determine which one of the many million pages that contain a particular word or phrase should be shown first? Get it right - and people will be using it time and again. Get it wrong - you will be dropped like a hot potato. The one engine that seemed to consistently 'get it right' was Google. Its secret was the addition of one ingredient that was not used by any other Search Engine before -- links. According to Google, a link is considered a 'vote of confidence' from one page to another. The more links - the more votes. Moreover, links from 'important' pages are valued higher than votes from 'non important' pages. What's an 'important' page? Well, a page that has a lot of other pages voting for it, in other words -- is heavily linked to. Google's founders coined the term PageRank to describe the numerical value of the page's Link Popularity. As soon as Google introduced Link Popularity in its ranking algorithm, users found the results to be amazingly accurate. Other Search Engines were quick to follow suit. It would be safe to assume that Link Popularity now plays a significant role in the ranking algorithm of all the major Search Engines. The challenge for site owners and web masters is to increase Link Popularity, which in turn increases the likelihood of pages from their sites appearing high in the search results. One of the best ways to start a link campaign is to get links from Directories. If you put the right amount of effort (and money) into it, you can see your Link Popularity increase significantly in a short space of time. The question is: How to judge the relative merits of Directories? Which ones are worth paying for? What elements do you need to look for to help you make an educated decision? Link types and Page Visibility Link Types The first and most important consideration is the link type. There are two types of links: Simple Link and a Redirected Link. You cannot discover the difference by clicking on them -- the results are absolutely identical, but from the perspective of a link campaign - the difference is fundamental. As far as Link Popularity is concerned, the Redirected Link is absolutely worthless. Here is why: A Simple Link is a link that contains the target URL of the site and directly points to it, as in this link: http://www.target-site.com. On the other hand, a Redirected Link points to a URL inside the current site, usually to a script file, and the address of the target site is passed to the script as a parameter, like this: http://www.this-site.com/jump.php?www.target-site.com. You can check the type of links used by a Directory by observing the 'Status bar' while hovering your mouse over the links. When a Search Engine visits a Directory that uses Redirected Links, it does not get from it the 'vote of confidence' for the linked sites -- as they do not show up as links at all! If anything, such links only 'strengthen' the internal script page, as there may be thousands of links pointing to it. Your site, if listed in such a Directory, will not see any of it. Page visibility This is another obvious and logical consideration. To gain Link Popularity, the Search Engine must 'know' that you are listed in the Directory. In other words, the Search Engine must capture the pages of the Directory and index them. Only then can it add the link from the Directory to your site - to your link popularity. This measurement is also known sometimes as 'Search Engine Saturation'. You can check the Search Engine Saturation of any site by using the appropriate search command in the Search Engines themselves, or you can take advantage of one of the freely provided tools such as Market Leap. When examining the results, do not just look for the highest total figure. As mentioned above, Link Popularity is now used by most (if not all) Search Engines. Find out if the Directory has good 'presence' in all the Search Engines. You will soon discover that some Search Engines are notoriously difficult to get indexed by, while others are relatively easy. A good 'spread' of Page Visibility among several Search Engines increases the chances of your site being picked up and indexed by them too. Thus, not only will you gain in Link Popularity, but also your site will be present in their index! PageRank and Back Links Not all links are created equal - some are more important than other. If you have the Google toolbar installed, it will give you a rough estimate on the page's 'importance', or PageRank (PR), on a scale of 0 to 10. A Directory with a high PR is more important than a Directory with a low PR. A Directory with many sites linking to it (back links) is more important than a Directory with just a few. Here, too, you can query the Search Engines themselves to find out or you can use the Market Leap tools) to get all the information easily and in a nicely presented format. The devil, as always, is in the details, so it pays to pay attention to them. Invariably, the Home Page of the directory will have the highest PR, but very few (if any) sites will be listed there. You should try to examine the PR of the specific Category in which your site will be listed to get an idea of the 'strength' of vote you are likely to receive from it. For example, although DMOZ has an exceptionally high PR of 9 on its home page, the deep category of Top: Business: Consumer Goods and Services: Sporting Goods: Fitness Equipment: Pilates Method is just PR 4. There is nothing wrong with a PR of 4, quite to the contrary, but it is not exceptional. Last but not least, be wary of Directories that show a 'grey bar' in Google's toolbar. This could mean that the site is very new, and Google has simply not visited it yet, but it could also mean that the site was banned from Google, and a link from it may be more harmful than helpful. As in real life, you may be judged by the company you keep - and not just by who you are. And in return... While some Directories provide a totally free, no-strings-attached, submission option, many Directories expect or require something in return. In most cases - it's simply money, ranging from a few dollars to several hundred. Few require an annual subscription to keep your site listed, but most are satisfied with a one-off payment. After all, your site will not be reviewed annually... In addition to (or instead of) payment, some Directories insist on getting a link from you before they agree to list your site. Others may require you to agree to get periodic emails that include promotion material for various products. Still others suggest that your site will only be listed if you join them and become an editor. There are many variations and some Directories offer several options to Site Owners. How can you make a good decision when faced with so many options and considerations? The answer lies, perhaps, in limiting your options and dealing with just a few directories. First, you must establish your goals for this link campaign. Is it traffic, Link popularity or both? Then, compare the sites that meet your requirements and rank them according to how closely they match. You may wish to consult freely available comparison tables, such as the one provided by Strongest Links. Finally, introduce the payment or condition imposed by the Directory. If you did it properly, the answer will simply unfold naturally. You are likely to discover that some Directories provide excellent value for money, others may be good value and some may be poor or very poor. The final arbiter on this question is you. Final words Few points worth remembering: Every statistical measurement merely reflects the current status of a site. Some Directories may grow and become world leaders and some may disappear altogether. Editors are humans too. You are much more likely to get a favorable response from them if you conduct yourself with dignity and integrity, and show consideration and courtesy to the Editors you contact. Almost all Directories provide guidelines and instructions for site submission. Study them carefully - this is time well spent as it may save you future aggravation and mismatch expectations. A very comprehensive and accurate source of information about Directories can be found here. Most of the major Directories are mentioned there, and all the important measurements that were discussed in this article Best of luck in your Directory Submission campaign!

Submitting your business-related blog for inclusion in the various exclusively blog and mainstream Internet directories is a good idea. After a few months in the search engine indexes, your blog will find a boost in the SERPs as a result of the added incoming links. Internet weblogs, better known as blogs, are fast becoming a very important category of Internet websites. As more and more companies add a blog component to their existing website, or as a cross linked stand alone site, blogs become part of the web mainstream. As part of that Internet mainstream, blogs are now finding entry into most of the popular Internet directories. The Open Directory Project, better known as DMOZ, has a special category for weblogs. Topic specific blogs are found under traditional website categories as well. The Yahoo! Directory has also proven to be very receptive to adding blogs to its listings. Because blogs are mainly non-profit sites, bloggers are able to use Yahoo's free submission option. Other smaller Internet directories, including JoeAnt, Skaffe, Zeal/Looksmart, GoGuides, and Gimpsy also have blogs in their regular category listings. Blogs are readily accepted into the major Internet directories alongside traditional websites. The blog advantage doesn't stop there. Blogs have an entire array of blog-only free Internet directories available for inclusion. In fact, as incoming links, the various blog directories alone can propel a blog very high in the search engine results pages (SERPs). As an added bonus, the many free all-blog directories provide a strong injection of Google PageRank, into every blog in the listings. Blog Specific Internet Directories The various blog directories have specific requirements for inclusion. As with all directory submissions, it is very important to follow the submission guidelines very carefully. Blogs are admitted to the most important major Internet directories, including DMOZ and the Yahoo! Directory. As alternative websites, blogs have special requirements for inclusion in the major directories. Submitting your business blog to the various mainstream and blog specific Internet directories will pay dividends for your business. You want to be sure your blog is included in the directory listings. Blog Specific Internet Directories One of the benefits that blogs enjoy is the number of free, strong PageRank directories that are exclusively for blog directories. If it's not a blog, it isn't included in the blog directory listings. By submitting your blog to the many blog directories, it is not unusual to be listed in them within a week or less. Inclusion in the directories, provides almost immediate indexing by Google, and by the other major search engines. The solid PageRanks offered by the blog directories help to seed the blog with a PageRank of 4 or 5, almost from the beginning of the blog. Note that the internal category pages of most blog directories carry a PR4, PR5, or even a PR6. The added PageRank boost and the one-way incoming link provided (usually one way) give the blog a leg up in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for the blog's most important keywords. Along with the search engine benefits, blog directories provide a surprisingly steady flow of new visitor traffic. Let's take a closer look at the many free blog-specific directories and their value for your blog. Blog Search Engine http://www.blogsearchengine.com Blogwise http://www.blogwise.com Eatonweb portal http://www.portal.eatonweb.com Blog Universe http://www.bloguniverse.com Popdex http://www.popdex.com Blogarama http://www.blogarama.com Blogdex http://www.blogdex.com Blo.gs http://www.blo.gs/ Globe of Blogs http://www.globeofblogs.com Blizg http://www.blizg.com Online Marketing Links http://www.onlinemarketinglinks.com There are many more blog-only directories as well. You get the picture. There is no shortage of great directories to list your new business blog. Submitting to the Blog Directories There are three important requirements for most blog directories. One is having a good short description of your blog content. It shouldn't exceed 150 characters. Any longer and it may get cut -- or even ignored. Description input boxes for most blog directory submissions are small. Some are capped at 150 characters. In any case, a short concise description is better than a long one. Blog directories rarely change your choice of description. That lets you utilize a few more keywords than the mainstream directories would allow. Don't go overboard with the keywords or your blog might be rejected as spam. A second requirement is a good list of keywords that you expect people to enter into the search box. A list of about ten to twelve search terms is ideal. Any more and you are either redundant, or keyword spamming. Blog directories are usually hand edited. Most blog directory editors take great pride in the quality of the blogs included in their various categories. Spamming the directories will only get your blog excluded, as with any other reputable directory. Most do not accept automated submissions either. Hand submission is required. A third, and often surprising requirement of a few blog directories, is meta tags. Most search engines and directories now ignore meta tags to some degree, or even entirely. Some blog directories, however, still place importance on them. Be sure to have some keywords included in your blog meta tags, as they will be needed for your blog submissions. All directories require your blog title, URL, and an active email address. Some directories will request additional indexing information, including your name and geographical location. Often the added information will place your blog in additional sub-categories, providing an extra listing for your blog. They may also require a link back to the directory itself. Give them the link. It often results in some preferential category listing, promotion, or placement. That superior placement means more traffic for your blog. Note that not all blog directories require a reciprocal link. Make certain that you apply to be included in the proper blog category. Most directories will move your blog, to their choice of category, if they don't believe your selection is appropriate. The last thing you want, for your business blog, is to be grouped in a category with some teenagers' personal diaries. Be sure to check over the categories very carefully, and you will have no problems. You can find many other blogs to share reciprocal links right there in your blog category. They share your interest, and are not likely competitors either. Remember that bloggers are very generous linkers compared to many traditional webmasters. Inclusion in a blog directory is surprisingly fast as well. It is not uncommon to be listed in your category within a few days to a week. Virtually every blog directory that considers your blog worthy of inclusion in its pages will have your blog indexed in less than a month. That is much quicker than some of the mainstream directories, most notably DMOZ. Blogs and the Mainstream Internet Directories Blogs are eligible for inclusion in most of the major mainstream Internet directories, including The Open Directory Project (DMOZ) http://www.dmoz.org and the Yahoo! Directory http://dir.yahoo.com/. DMOZ has become very friendly to blogs and has opened up an entirely new blog category http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs/ Within that main blogging category are numerous sub-categories, covering most of the major classes of blogs. There are also a number of blogs, covering specific topic areas, included in the main DMOZ listings. Blogs are well received by the volunteer editors of DMOZ because of the constantly updated content contained within the weblog. DMOZ tends to favor websites that are content driven, and that is one of the hallmarks of blogs. By acknowledging the growing influence of blogs, in all areas of the Internet, the DMOZ directory is including an expanding classification of websites. The number of blogs included in the DMOZ listings will only continue to grow over time as more and more blogs are included in the index. As with any website submission to the DMOZ directory, it is essential that you follow the guidelines for submission very carefully. They are not merely a suggestion. They are an absolute requirement. As with DMOZ, the Yahoo! Directory includes a major section exclusively for blogs: http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/World_Wide_Web/Weblogs Within the overall blogging section of the directory are numerous sub-categories for the many blog subject areas. Because blogs tend to be informational, and not overtly commercial, most blogs are admitted to the Yahoo! Directory under the free inclusion system. Submission of blogs to the directory, through the Suggest A Site link, often leads to inclusion in just a matter of a few weeks. A well-written objective blog description is likely to be used almost unchanged as well. The many other mainstream Internet directories are also very blog friendly. JoeAnt, Skaffe, Zeal/Looksmart, GoGuides, and Gimpsy all welcome blogs to their listings. Many of these secondary directories place blogs directly into the main topic categories and not into a separate blog section. As with all directory submissions, be certain to follow the recommended guidelines very carefully. A properly completed submission is far more likely to be accepted than one filled with errors, keyword stuffing, and hype. Conclusion Submitting your business-related blog for inclusion in the various exclusively blog and mainstream Internet directories is a good idea. The addition of Google PageRank from the various blog directories provides a solid jump start to a blog's early PageRank. After a few months in the search engine indexes, your blog will find a boost in the SERPs as a result of the added incoming links. Blog directories provide a steady stream of visitors to your blog, creating a potential customer and client base for the future. As with all Internet directories, make certain that you follow all of the recommended submission guidelines. While most blog directories will include your blog, it is still important for you to make certain you submit to the proper category. Blogs are also eligible for inclusion in the mainstream Internet directories, including DMOZ and Yahoo! Directory. Blogs are welcomed in the secondary Internet directories as well. If you currently maintain a business blog, or are considering one for the future, be certain to submit it to the various Internet directories. The benefits will help your blog tremendously.

If you want your site to be found on the Internet, very few people would debate the wisdom of submitting it to Google or DMOZ. It obviously makes sense to be listed on the premier search engine and in the top directory. But what about all those other directories and engines out there? Is it worthwhile being listed, and if so, is it better to make your submission manually or use an automated software tool? This article will examine these questions and in the process try to determine what to look for if you decide to use an automated tool for submission. Introduction Some search engines and directories make it virtually impossible to be included except by manual submission. The two best examples are perhaps Google and DMOZ. While no sites actually seem to encourage automated submission, it is certainly actively discouraged at a number of sites. This does not mean that there is something inherently wrong with automated submission. After all it's just an easy way to fill out a form. While Google does not allow automated submissions, they implicitly admit the legitimacy of doing so by providing an “autofill” button on their plug-in toolbar. The aversion to automated submissions has varied causes but some obvious reasons can be identified. Automated submissions can lead to server overload and vulnerability to denial of service attacks. Inappropriate submissions, for example submitting a general interest URL to a specialty engine, can happen much more easily when submission is automated. Finally, manually maintained directories are particularly sensitive to inappropriate categorisation and trivial requests for inclusion. For them manual submissions separate the wheat from the chaff. If we accept that automated submissions are legitimate, the question still remains as to whether it is worthwhile. Even with the recent changes at Yahoo, the dominance of Google tends to overshadow all other search engine. While estimates of Google's importance vary, a significant number of searches do originate with other engines. Certainly there can be no denying the usefulness of specialized search engines. Guidelines for Automated Submission With these issues aside, let's get to the heart of the matter. Automated submissions can be done in a couple of ways. You can purchase a software package or find a website that performs this function. We are primarily concerned with the former since this has more appeal for the web developer because it provides an inexpensive way of making multiple submissions for different sites. These packages may be dedicated engine-submission tools or part of an integrated suite of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) tools. What I propose to do here is develop some general guidelines to help you determine what to look for if you are in the market for this kind of software. User Friendly Interface While it is a truism to say that a user-friendly interface is important, it is especially critical for automated submission software because this is a task that the user can choose to do manually. Most people won't use an automated tool if significant savings in time are not immediately evident and if using software is more confusing than doing it manually. On the other hand, if the software allows you to set up your site and begin submissions very quickly, then it probably will not do a good job for you. Different engines/directories have different requirements from the most basic that want only an URL, to those that want a very specialised category selection. In particular, submissions for directories require careful choices regarding categories and subcategories. When setting up a site for automated submission be prepared for a fair bit of data entry. Automation can relieve some of the tedium involved, but proper set-up will still require patience. Organization In order to be really useful, engines and directories need to be sorted in a variety of ways. First off, engines should be categorized according to their status. Certainly major and minor engines should be distinguished. While there are various ways of categorizing information, it is important that the user have enough information to make a sensible judgment about whether or not to submit to a specific engine. For instance, in some cases you will find the “Femina” Engine listed as a general search engine. By their own definition Femina consider themselves a specialized site. Submitting a general site to this engine is probably a waste of time for all concerned. Submissions should probably also be sorted by both country and language. Some packages seem fairly sloppy in this regard. It is not very helpful when a site such as “Canadopedia” is designated as a U.S. site especially when it is self-described as “made in Canada by Canadians for all Canadians”. Good organization will also help you keep track of your submissions and thus avoid multiple submissions to the same site. Some sites will assume you are spamming them if you submit more than once, and you could end up achieving the exact opposite of what you intend. In any case, I think we can conclude that the better organized and the more information that a software tool supplies the more useful it is to the web developer. What is CozyCabin.com? Beware of claims such as, "We'll submit your website to 1000+ major search engines”. At best this statement is misleading. There aren't a thousand major search engines out there. You should check out some of the engines listed for automated submission especially if the software does not provide a link directly to an engine's site. It was with this in mind that I tried to locate a search engine called “Pete's Internet Links”. A search on Google turns up over ten pages of sites with references to this “engine” but the engine itself is nowhere to be found. Perhaps it once existed but there's no reason for it to appear in current versions of autosubmission software other than to bloat numbers and mislead buyers. Where extravagant claims are made about the number of engines submitted to, further investigation will doubtless turn up other “vapour engines”. For this reason an active link to the home page of an engine is a must-have feature of any submission software. Clicking the link should open the search engine page in your default browser or within the software itself. This will help verify the nature and existence of the site. Another way of assessing the engines you are submitting to is by checking their popularity. To form some idea of the ranking of different search engines go to http://www.freewebsubmission.com. You'll find a listing of search engines and directories ranked by their popularity on Alexa's engine. Alternately, you can go to the Alexa site itself and check out their ranking of different sites. You will have to sort out the information for yourself though. For instance, directories and engines are not listed together. And, yes, cozycabin.com does exist, but have a look at the site before you decide to make a submission. Confirmation and Updates In view of what has been said above, it is important to ask “What kind of confirmation do you get when you make a submission to a site?” Does the software show you the page returned by the engine when a successful submission has been made? If not you might quite rightly be suspicious that your page has not been properly submitted or that you've made a submission to a “vapour engine”. For an individual who is doing a one-time submission of his site to search engines, updates are not a major issue. For the web developer who makes submissions on a regular basis for different clients, it is quite a different matter. We all know how frequently websites change, so if you are purchasing software it is important to know how frequently the database is updated and how long the updates are supplied for free. The situation is analogous to using anti-virus software. It doesn't matter how good the anti-virus software is if the virus database is outdated. Changes to the database of engines may become necessary for a variety of reasons but primarily because of changes to submission requirements. Most packages allow you to download updates as they become available, again in much the same way as you would update a virus definition file. The better software packages will inform you of the changes made. Most software packages will allow you to print a report of submissions made. Forwarding this information to your clients is good customer relations but only if the information is reliable and up-to-date. A Word of Caution As a result of automated submissions you will doubtless receive some unwanted email. I won't dwell on the irony of this situation other than to say “He who lives by the sword...” As part of the submission process, many sites require a valid email address. In some cases, a site will not be added if there is no response to a confirming email. An awkward situation can develop if you are adding a listing on behalf of a client and this client starts receiving spam. One solution is to set up a temporary email address that is used for the short term or an address that redirects emails to one of your own accounts. In this way legitimate confirmations can be handled and spam need not reach your client. Search Engine and Directory Submission: Automated, Manual, or Not at All? - Conclusion For individuals trying to promote their own websites, manual submission might well be the best option. Specialty engines can be identified and categorization can be carefully tailored so that one's site appears exactly where it ought to in a directory. For exactly the same reasons, submission for any specialty website might best be handled by manual submission. On the other hand, for the web professional regularly making submissions on behalf of clients, an automated tool is an invaluable assistant. Submissions can be made quickly and be automatically documented. However, careful choice of software is very important. Look for submission software that documents engines, provides information about them and links to them. Look for software that is regularly updated and that removes engines as well as adds them. Any submission should show the confirmation page generated by a successful submission. Do not look at total number of engines as a sign of quality software. In fact, beware extravagant claims about number of engines – these probably include “vapour engines”. Submission software should carefully document what submissions have been made and to what sites. In this way you can avoid making multiple submissions. This is something that some sites will interpret as spamming and they will penalise you for it. You need to protect your own and your clients' interests and not achieve the opposite to your desired effect. Many companies provide free trial or “lite” versions of submission software often as part of an integrated suite of tools. To locate these packages check the DMOZ listing under the category, “Computers: Software: Internet: Website Promotion”. After all, any company in the Search Engine business should be listed here! Test drive these packages carefully and you'll be able to make the right purchasing decision.

DMOZ is a very important, widely-used, and well-known Internet directory. Getting listed in DMOZ can mean more traffic for your website. If you want to increase the impact of your listing, read on.The Open Directory Project (ODP) http://www.dmoz.org, often referred to as DMOZ, is probably the single most important directory on the Internet. You want your website to be listed, and you are probably well versed in the basics of submissions. You want to know how you can enhance your listing opportunities in the DMOZ directory, and perhaps even multiply them. There are some advanced techniques available, but as with anything involving DMOZ, you have to be very careful to follow the published rules. The DMOZ submission basics Before you can go on to advanced DMOZ submission concepts, you need to be fully conversant in the basic submission procedure. A trip to the Open Directory Project “Add URL” page at http://www.dmoz.org/add.html provides step by step instructions for you to follow. Read them. Study them. Follow them. The instructions are not simply a guideline. They are an absolute requirement for getting your website listed in the Open Directory Project. Start by finding the proper category. That sounds simple enough on the surface, but you need to explore each category, and dig ever deeper within it. Find the category or sub-category best suited to your website. Submitting a site to the wrong category is one of the primary reasons for rejection. Choose the correct category before you submit your site and your success rate will be greatly increased. Select the wrong one, and your submission is likely to be delayed. Make certain you write an objective description of your website. The description should be completely free of sales and marketing hype. If the description is simply a keyword spamming device, the category editors will change it to a more suitable one. You probably won’t like the description the volunteers write for you. It’s better if you write a good one in the first place. If you follow the instructions, and submit a quality, professional looking website, you will likely be included in the DMOZ Directory. Advanced DMOZ submission techniques After your site’s initial inclusion, you may have improved your site. You have probably added additional content, or perhaps even changed the focus of your website completely. Your DMOZ listing information is not carved in stone. You can update your listing title and description, change categories, and even add your website to additional subject categories. As with all submissions to DMOZ, care must be taken to follow all of the Directory rules. With additional listings, and changes to titles, categories, and descriptions, there are even more guidelines to follow. Here is some help in that regard. Seeking multiple Directory listings A goal of many webmasters is to place their website into more than one DMOZ category. Since there are many sites that have received two or more listings in the Directory, it makes sense to try to achieve that goal. The DMOZ Directory is designed to place sites with unique content into the various suitable subject categories. How a website can find its way into a second, or even a third category, is something to be examined. Be certain you are not spamming the Directory by sending multiple submissions at once. Always submit one site at a time, to one category at a time. Always resist the urge to resubmit your site. It will only be moved to the back of the line, because DMOZ operates on a first come, first served basis for maximum fairness to all. Your site should already have a listing in the DMOZ Directory before you attempt any additional category submissions. If you submit a new and not yet listed site to more than one category, it may be rejected for spamming the Directory. Treat submissions to additional categories the same way. Avoid the mistake of submitting them differently. Always follow the Directory submission rules, each and every time you submit a website. The DMOZ directory is user oriented. It is designed to help those searching for information. That means a site must provide clearly unique content, to improve the Directory user experience. If you are already listed in one category, your site is considered to contain unique and important information on that topic. The Directory does not need your site to achieve its goals, but always welcomes sites that enhance the Directory content. Be sure to keep the Directory’s goals in mind when you attempt to add additional links. How to get a second category listing To gain a second listing, you must be able to clearly demonstrate that your site offers additional unique information. By unique information, I don’t mean one or two articles in the middle of your site, on another topic. That is not enough. It will only be rejected. For example, let us assume that you have a travel information site. Your site was previously submitted and accepted under one of the travel categories. Over time, you may have developed an entire technical section on your website, about the aircraft used by the airlines. You may be able to get your site listed under one of the Aerospace categories as well. It’s very important to note that if you are seeking a second DMOZ listing for your site, it must contain enough important and useful content to be included in a second category. The information provided by your site must almost amount to a second website. A few articles on the subject will not qualify. The content must be substantial and unique, and in keeping with the policies of DMOZ. The same principles of submission apply for a second DMOZ listing as for a first Directory listing. Your site must contain useful and unique content to gain entry into the second category. The information provided must be of real value to the ODP user. Remember, submitting your site to a second category is considered the same as gaining your site’s initial inclusion in the Directory. The same rules apply. Before you make a submission for an additional category listing, be absolutely certain you have the quantity and quality of unique content to do so. Now is certainly not the time for unrealistic thoughts about your site’s content. Be objective. The secondary information provided by your website must be able to stand as if it were a full website on its own. Getting an added listing in the regional categories Along with your main submission, you can also get your site listed in the Open Directory Project’s Regional Directory. If you have an offline bricks and mortar business that serves a mainly regional market, you may be able to get DMOZ to add a locally oriented listing for your site. Of course, there is no guarantee that it will happen, but it’s definitely worth an attempt. When you apply for a regional listing, be sure that your site has a clearly marked physical address, displayed prominently on your site. It almost certainly has to be easily seen on the home page of your site, and preferably on the inside pages as well. That doesn’t mean you can get away with your address written in tiny print at the bottom of the page. Display it prominently. If your site does a lot of locally based business, your site should qualify for a regional listing. Be sure your site contains a large proportion of added local and regional content. The information provided should reflect the local area, and be of interest to the residents. In many cases, local and regional customers and clients will be the main users of your website. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking a regional is listing is less important. The people living in the area think the region is important. You should consider the area important as well, by providing a lot of content, specifically for local visitor traffic. With enough local and regional content on your site, you can be included in the DMOZ Regional Listings. A second regional listing is certainly worth having for your website. Non-English language sites If your site has a substantial amount of content in a language other than English, you can make a submission of your site to the appropriate World Languages section. Be certain that your site contains a lot of information to non-English speakers. A few translated pages are not enough to qualify. As with adding a site to a second category, the DMOZ World Languages categories require the equivalent of a stand alone website to be accepted by the editors. Updating an already listed website If your site is already included in the Directory, you can always update your website title and description. To request an update, you must complete an “Update URL” form. Follow the rules and requirements carefully, as you would with any other submission. If you believe your site was included in the wrong category, you can e-mail one of the category editors, and explain your disagreement. Politely request a change of categories for your website, and provide good reasons for the change. You might also try posting in the DMOZ Resource Zone forum, located at http://resource-zone.com/. As with all submissions and correspondence with the Open Directory Project, be sure to follow all of the published forum rules to the letter. Note that you must register with the forum (free) to post. As with all DMOZ rules and regulations, they are not just suggestions. They are absolute requirements. Always be polite and professional in all of your correspondence with the volunteer editors. They are providing a valuable service to the Internet community, and deserve everyone’s courtesy and respect. You are not e-mailing to a “faceless organization” but to a real people who are dedicated to performing their editorial duties to the best of their abilities. Be professional at all times. If you are dissatisfied with the response you receive from an editor, you may then use their “feedback” link to appeal the decision. The feedback e-mail is carefully examined and considered by the DMOZ staff. Their decision will be weighed for the benefit to the Directory and its goals. Keep that in mind. Don’t attempt to pressure the editors into any decisions by contacting AOL, Netscape, Google, or any other users of DMOZ listings. It simply won’t work. At best, it will slow down the process. At worst, it may get your site removed and banned from the Directory entirely. Summing it up If you always read and follow the DMOZ submission requirements, you can find your site added to second and even third categories. You can have a site added to the Regional listings if you can show a substantial local focus to your website. There is a good World Languages section for non-English websites, and for sites that have an extensive non-English component. Changing your site’s title, description, and category are all possible as well. As with your initial submission to the Open Directory Project, be sure to follow the rules and regulations. It’s definitely worth it!

Getting accepted by the Open Directory Project is an important move if you want to promote your site; it will even help you with Google. But what exactly is it? How do you submit your site? And what will help you get accepted? Wayne Hurlbert answers these and other questions about this important Internet directory. What is the Open Directory Project? The Open Directory Project http://www.dmoz.org, better known as DMOZ, is probably the single most important directory on the Internet. Submissions are accepted free of charge. Sites are considered for inclusion by volunteer editors who review the sites offered for consideration in their very specific categories. The number of different categories is very large, and covers most of the topics found on the Internet as a whole. Why is DMOZ important? DMOZ listings are important for several reasons. The listing is given considerable weight in the Google algorithm because DMOZ is a human edited directory. Not every site submitted is included. Inclusion in DMOZ is about the only way to get into the Google Directory. Many smaller directories, and even minor search engines, use DMOZ listings as the basis for their own categorized sites. The link popularity value in the search engines is quite high as a result of a DMOZ listing, both directly from the directory itself, and from the subsequent addition to many small dirctories. How is DMOZ different from a search engine like Google? The Open Directory Project is, as its name implies, an Internet directory. As such, it requires submission to the appropriate category for indexing from a volunteer editor. There is no other source of entry to DMOZ except through the human editing process. Google, Yahoo Search, MSN Search, and Ask Jeeves are search engines which add sites for indexing into their database electronically. Submission of a site to a search engine is not required, or even recommended. What types of websites are included in the directory? There are almost 600,000 categories and sub-categories included in the Open Directory Project index. As such, there is room for almost any website or blog that includes unique and interesting content for its visitors. Not all sites are included, however, as they might not contain the necessary unique content. Affiliate sites often fail to be included for not having enough original content. How do I get my site listed in DMOZ? To get into DMOZ, you must submit your site for consideration. The first step is to go to the DMOZ site, and search through the relevant categories where your site might fit. When you have narrowed your target to the most appropriate category, go to it, and click on "add URL." Be absolutely certain to read the instructions very carefully. They are not merely a suggestion. They are an absolute requirement. Be sure to submit just your home page to only one category. Multiple page or category submissions will likely be treated as spam, and your site will be rejected. Are blogs eligible for inclusion? Because blogs are another form of dynamic website, they are eligible for inclusion in DMOZ. In fact, the directory has created an entire category for blogs alone. In many cases, niche blogs are also found in the main directory categories, along with other traditional websites. DMOZ is now very friendly to blogs. Who decides whether or not my site is included in DMOZ? DMOZ is an entirely volunteer edited directory. Each directory category has editors, as do most directory sub-categories. When a category is lacking an editor, submissions are considered by editors higher up the category scale. The inclusion of any website is based on a thorough review of a site and its content. I heard some editors are not honest or fair. Is that true? The overwhelming majority of DMOZ editors are dedicated people, working to provide the best possible Internet directory. While a few editors might be construed as having ulterior motives, they are in the tiniest minority. The main category editors work hard to make certain the site selections are fair and reasonable. As with any human activity, however, some problem individuals will slip through the cracks. Unfair and self serving editors are corrected in their techniques -- or are removed entirely. How do I decide on the proper submission category? The first step to doing a listing is to check the various directory categories, and find the appropriate one for your site. As mentioned above, there are a lot of categories, and sub-categories, and sub-sub- categories. Be very thorough here, because submitting your site to the wrong category can result in very long waits, and possibly even rejection. Don’t be afraid to spend a little time searching through the various options. You must submit to the correct category for your site. One way to ensure you are in the right one is to search through it. If you don’t see any similar sites to yours, it’s time to check out another category. How do I write a site description? A site description should be written as objectively as possible. The best technique for writing a successful description is to write about the site as a visitor would view it. An honest and objective description is most likely to be accepted, and not changed by an editor. It’s also thought that an objective description, free of blatant marketing and keyword stuffing, will help a site to become indexed faster. How long do I have to wait for inclusion in the directory? Inclusion time can vary from as little as a few days in some heavily edited categories to as long as a year or more. In general, however, the average length of time for a submission to be approved is about two months. If I am accepted or rejected, will I hear from the editors? The editors do not notify website owners as to whether the site was accepted or rejected. The reason for this apparent omission is to discourage spammers from submitting the same sites over and over again. How often should I submit to the directory? Since the website submissions are accepted by some editors on a first come first served basis, and by type of site by other editors, you wait. The waiting period can last anywhere from one week to six long agonizing months. Whatever you do, don't decide to resubmit your site. At best, your submission will be moved to the back of the line, where the waiting period starts all over again. At worst, your site may even be rejected for spamming. Should I submit to several categories just to be sure of being in one category? Resist the urge to resubmit your site to more than one category, as you could be rejected for spamming the directory. While the waiting period can seem like an eternity, you simply have to wait it out. Some categories have a huge backlog of submitted sites. Others lack editors to keep up with the volume of new sites. By having carefully selected your category, you are at least certain you don’t have to worry about being in the wrong one. What are some possible reasons for rejecting my site? Your site could be rejected for any number of reasons. The most common reason for delays and rejections is not being submitted to the correct category. Another possibility is that you submitted a site that is not eligible for directory inclusion. Badly designed sites, lack of original and unique content, and sites still under construction are other reasons for rejection. Spamming the directory editors with the same site on numerous occasions will almost certainly result in rejection. How do I contact the editors? Editors can be accessed directly through their Feedback link. Be sure you made an accurate record of the submission date and category when the site was submitted. They will ask for that information. They want to be sure you submitted to the proper category, and that you have given their volunteers sufficient time to look over your website. How do I find out the current status of my submission? The best idea is to ask a polite question on the DMOZ public forum, located at http://www.resource-zone.com. You don't have to be registered to read the forum, but you must register (free) to post a question. As always, be sure to read and follow the posting guidelines. Once again, you will be asked for the date of submission, category submitted to, and the category editor. While at the DMOZ forum, you can also ask some questions about their requirements and regulations. The editors will try to help you in every way they can. While they can’t specifically give you a date for your inclusion, they can let you know if you are in the proper category. Can I change my site description or category? To request an update, you must complete an “Update URL” form. Follow the rules and requirements carefully, as you would with any other submission. If you believe your site was included in the wrong category, you can send an email to one of the category editors, and explain your disagreement. Politely request a change of categories for your website, and provide good reasons for the change. Paying attention to the original description, and applying to the correct category in the first place, is the best technique. Changes to DMOZ listings happen very slowly. What are regional listings? A regional listing is for businesses and websites marketing to a specific geographical area. A local hardware store, for example, would fall under this category. When you apply for a regional listing, be sure that your site has a clearly marked physical address, displayed prominently on your site. It almost certainly has to be easily seen on the home page of your site, and preferably on the inside pages as well. That doesn’t mean you can get away with your address written in tiny print at the bottom of the page. Display it prominently. If your site does a lot of locally based business, your site should qualify for a regional listing. Is a DMOZ regional listing less important? Don’t fall into the trap of thinking a regional is listing is less important. The people living in the area think the region is important. You should consider the area important as well, by providing a lot of content, specifically for local visitor traffic. With enough local and regional content on your site, you can be included in the DMOZ Regional Listings. A second regional listing is certainly worth having for your website. Can I add a second listing for my site? It’s very important to note that if you are seeking a second DMOZ listing for your site, it should contain enough important and useful content to be included in a second category. The information provided by your site must almost amount to a second website. A few articles on the subject will not qualify. The content must be substantial and unique, and in keeping with the policies of DMOZ. I have an affiliate site, so how do I avoid rejection? You must distinguish your affiliate site from the thousands of other affiliate sites out there. The way to do that is to add content. DMOZ requires original content. A single sales page doesn’t qualify. To add content, you could write reviews of the products you offer. You might want to discuss the problems your products and services address. Writing about industry news related to your products and services will also be helpful to your submission. How can I make my site more acceptable to DMOZ? Be sure you have no pages "under construction," because the editors will reject any sites that aren't ready for prime time. If you still have pages that are not completed, either remove them until they are ready for the public, or finish adding their content. Whatever you do, get rid of any “under construction” or similar red flag pages that indicate your site is not fully operational. Does having a professional looking site help? An important thing to do is to check over your site content for typos. While some keyboarding errors might not doom your site to rejection, having a professional looking site will certainly enhance your chances of success. Good professionally done sites, that feature a lot of original and useful content, are almost always accepted.

Teoma's Search Technology One search engine that really caught my attention at the search engine strategies conference in Chicago was Teoma. Teoma is the search engine that powers Ask Jeeves, also known as Ask.com. Teoma has made several improvements to its engine over the past year, and has drastically increased its indexing and the quality of results generated. Teoma has a unique method of ranking sites, reffered to as “authority.” In addition, Teoma offers a toolbar and many of the advanced search features that other search engine have. Teoma’s History and Background Teoma’s founder and vice president of research and development, Apostolos Gerasoulis, Ph.D, is a Professor of computer science from Rutgers University. Professor Gerasoulis, along with his team of computer scientists founded Teoma in April of 2000. Their single goal was to build a search engine that looked “at the Web in terms of subject-specific communities.” Teoma had the advantage of joining the search engine wars late in the game. This allowed the Teoma team to look at what the current engines did right and - more importantly - what they. Teoma.com was not officially launched until a year later, in April 2001. On September 18, 2001, Ask Jeeves, Inc. acquired Teoma, paying over USD $1.5 million. On January 9, 2002, Ask Jeeves announced its successful integration of the Teoma search technology into Ask Jeeves. Ask Jeeves reported an increase user satisfaction of 25% and a site abandonment rate of 15% less after this integration. In 2002 Nielsen/NetRatings reported that Teoma had grown 175%, making Teoma the third most popular search engine in the United States. Teoma 2.0 was released on January 21, 2003. The new version boasts improvements to overall search result relevancy, additions to search tools, and more advanced search functions. Teoma currently powers Ask Jeeves’s primary organic results, and receives its paid search results from Google AdWords. Teoma adds a new layer of “authority” to search results through something they call “Subject-Specific Popularity.” Google’s PageRank, simply explained, ranks pages based on the quality and the number of inbound links to a site. Teoma ranks sites based on related communities of sites that are “organically organized” and link to each other. It then determines which sites are most relevant based an authority factored, that is where Subject-Specific Popularity comes into play. Subject-Specific Popularity determines the authority of a site based on the number of pages that link to a page within the same subject. Teoma provides a nice analogy to why this is important. They write, “picture yourself in your garage, in front of the opened hood of your severely out-of-commission pick-up truck. You need help with this major repair, and you can either ask your uncle, who owns two cars but has never held a wrench in his life and happens to be visiting (similar to using other leading search technologies) or you could phone your best friend, who has a degree in applied mechanics and builds automobiles from the ground up in his spare time (similar to Subject-Specific Popularity). The choice is quite clear.” When Teoma 2.0 was released it provided improved relevancy, more accurate communities, spell checking, “Dynamic Descriptions”, more advanced search tools and an expanded index. Ask Jeeves reports an increased “user pick-rate” of 22% and a site abandonment decrease of 28% since the upgrade. In addition, Teoma received a relevancy grade of “A” from Search Engine Watch, adding them to the elite group of search engines, which includes the likes of such others as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. By improving Teoma’s analysis of “Communities” they were able to increase the relevancy of pages by better evaluating authoritative pages. In addition, the “refine” search option found on Teoma.com enables searchers to easily narrow down their search results. Many search engines have Web-based spell check, and Teoma added this in its 2.0 version. Teoma 2.0 added other enhancements and features, as well as increasing its index by over 500 million URLs. Teoma’s Features and Advanced Search Functions Teoma provides numerous methods to both refine your search and locate subject specific resources. Conduct a search on search technology and you will find on the right side a “Refine” option that presents you with useful “refinements” to your search query. In addition, you will find a collection of “Resources” directly below the refinements option that easily allows you to locate “expert” sites on search technology. You will also see that Search Engine Watch is one of those results. You will also see the sponsored listings at the top, provided by Google, and you will find the Web page results directly below. Google is the first result for that keyword (and we all know why). In addition, Ask.com allows you to search for anything and it attempts to provide exactly what you are looking for without the use of any "tabs." For example, I did a search on "picture of chair" at Ask Jeeves, and - guess what? It gave me actual pictures of chairs! Ask Jeeves calles this technology Natural Language Processing (NLP). For a complete listing of technologies and features provided by Ask Jeeves, please visit: http://sp.ask.com/docs/about/tech.html. For advanced search tips from Teoma, please visit: http://sp.teoma.com/docs/teoma/about/advsearchtips.html. Conclusion Teoma has come a long way since April 2000, and has achieved the rank of number three search technology. Its unique method of providing relevant and accurate results makes Teoma and its partners stand apart from the other search engine technologies. As the features and index improve, Teoma will continue to succeed by adding partners and a more satisfied user base. It will be interesting to follow Teoma and Ask Jeeves over this coming year, seeing how they compete with the other major search engines.

Most business webmasters are aware of such high profile directories as the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) and the Yahoo! Directory. DMOZ is a free option, while the Yahoo! Directory offers paid inclusion for commercial sites. There are other directories that are well worth your consideration. Today, we’ll be looking at a couple of paid and free inclusion directories: Business.com and JoeAnt. Alternative directories, whether offering free or paid inclusion, provide some highly visible promotion for your website. Many of the less popular directories offer added PageRank, in the form of a strong back-link. The directories also provide qualified referrals, which use the listings to find the goods and services offered by your business. The potential offered by alternative directories is worthy of consideration. While the paid inclusion options may not fit your budget, you certainly want to be aware of whether your competitors are listed. One example of a good paid inclusion directory is the Business.com directory.If budgetary restrictions are a concern, you need to look seriously at some free directory options. A well-regarded free inclusion directory is the JoeAnt Directory. Paid or Free Directory Inclusion - Business.com Directory: B