Once you have submitted, wait for a couple of weeks. If your site still isn't in the index, you may choose to resubmit (there's no penalty for resubmission and sometimes it may help), submit to another category or choose the paid submission way if you don't have much time.
The DMOZ
An alternative directory is DMOZ, which stands for "Directory.MOZilla" and is also known under the name of ODP which stands for Open Directory Project. It is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links owned by Time Warner that is constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors.
After Google made the decision to remove links to DMOZ results from its result pages, DMOZ has lost some of its importance. However, listing there can still be extremely profitable for your rankings and general web visibility.
To submit, go to their main page, then find the most appropriate category for your site and click the "Suggest URL". Unlike Yahoo! Directory, here you shouldn't submit to a top-level category. Instead, drill down until you find the best subcategory for your site.
If you submit to an inappropriate category, the editor of that category has to transfer your submission to another category. In order to do that, he/she has to visit the main page and click through to find the "perfect" category. This is time consuming, and a lot of editors won't do it. They'll simply reject your submission. So, you should be very careful about choosing the best category for your site. When searching for an appropriate subcategory visit the different engines that utilize ODP results (Google and Google family: AOL Search and Netscape Search; then, AltaVista and finally Lycos). Search for your keyword phrase, and see which categories come up. Give your preference to results from the engine you target most.
Create a captivating title and description which contain your keywords. Make sure they are professional and sincere. Then, complete the submission form.
Submit your main URL in the best subcategory. If you have an interior page that stands on its own and has a lot of relevant information, you can try submitting it into a second subcategory.
A "last updated on" note on your site can be informative to the editors, especially if it's been updated very recently. Like the Yahoo! Directory, ensure that your site is error-free and there are no missing images or broken links. For instance, you may use Web CEO site quality Auditor for this purpose. Don't submit directly to the ODP if you've submitted your site to the ODP links on any of the other engines.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Tan The Man
Very thorough...
2 - Raul Vergara
thank you pal
3 - gimmster
A couple of minor errors in the DMOZ section.
Resource Zone has not provided individual site status checks since May 21 2005.
Search usually lags the actual directory by approximately a week. If searching for a url, use the form sitename.tld not www.sitename.tld
4 - Raul Vergara
gimmster,
it would help if you can give the url reference for this announcement for the information of everyone. thanks for the information.
5 - gimmster
here
6 - Eric Olsen
very nice job - thanks and welcome Raul!
7 - Brian Sorrell
Nicely done Raul!
This is a topic worth taking seriously -- at least for anyone in the industry. It's the kind of knowledge that can help to abate the spate of demonic-SEOs who keep spamming referrer stats, guestbooks and forums around the 'net. Your other articles are also excellent contributions. I hope that they get the attention that they deserve.
Cheers!
8 - John Davidson
Ya, except many say DMOZ is corrupt. See this for examples.
9 - Chris
That's great info and I always recommend my B2B clients to be listed on Thomas Register's ThomasNet.
10 - [Geeks Are Sexy] Tech. News
Very nice article, unfortunatly, submission to directories like this seems to fall off in the garbage bin 50% of the time ;)
Cheers!
Kiltak
[Geeks Are Sexy] Tech. News
11 - R. Matthews
"With the directories, there's no such concept as "ranking"... "
That's a little inaccurate. There IS one directory that goes beyond just listing and the editors actually rank websites: iOS.
Also, DMOZ editors do not always transfer a mis-categorized submission to another category. More often than not, a mis-categorized submission will be deleted.
12 - Musonica Media
Thanks, this is valuable advice in getting new sites on search engines fast! Does anyone know of other directories worth following up?
13 - The Information Bank
what do you think about blog directories?
14 - Jon
@Musonica Media: joeant.com, lii.org, mpios.com (mentioned above) are all great. i try to avoid massively sponsored directories as much as possible - the SEs tend to rank links from these much lower. lii.org and mpios.com tend to be tough directories to get into (usually because your site does not meet their criteria).
15 - Paul Reilly
If I could have a $ for every small business that mass submits to all the directories and ends up getting hammered my spam email, I'd be a rich man.
Paul
Viral Marketing UK Blog
16 - John Betty
Pilots of Valor is a Central Florida Chapter of Pilots for Christ, International. We are a non-profit, Christian Aviation Organization that provides Mercy, Missionary, Evangelism, Outreach, Community flight, Mentoring Programs and Aviation based services.
17 - Aaman
Why does Christ need a pilot? Doesn't he fly himself?
18 - Z.Z. Bachman
Another thing to try if you are a blogger is to get your blog's URL in a BlogRing. We have over 180+ blogs listed and what makes us different is that we manually screen to blogs to be sure they are active and have high comment rates.
When you couple a search optimized Directory, with blog surfing services AND a good blogring the effect is amplified and the cost is virtually 0 just your time to cut and past html code into yuor template. Pretty sweet!
Great article Raul!
Here is also a great link that will give you a very comprehensive listing of Directories to enter your URL:
Here is our link to it: OpenWeb Directory and RSS Top 55 Site
--------------------------------------------------------------
ZZ Bachman / Have a Blog? Ring Surf it @ ZZ OpenRing
19 - Kart Redfield
Heres some tips and tricks of Search Engine Optimization that will surely help your site building traffic!
Submit to as many quality directories, article sites and Press Releases as possible like this site www.submityourarticlesnow.com . While doing so the most important factor to remember is that all these should have a unique content and anchor text. As this is what I am using for several years successfully and which I am promoting as "8 magical SEO Technique|submityourarticlesnow".
Many people do submit articles to various sites and think there job is over. But if you really want your article to make headlines, you should make it as unique as possible like the title above which is "The most effective SEO techiques!|SubmitYourArticlesNow!|". So now you know what this technique means.
Getting Backlinks: Most SEO's think the more the linkbacks the better the PR and SERP's which is one of the most biggest rumours going around in the world of SEO.
Don't place common anchor text on hundred's and thousands of sites as these can be identified by Search engines as link spam or a Black hat technique.
Avoid Link Farms: Avoid sites which offer thousands of links instantly by placing a folder on your site. This is one of the worst methods of getting linkbacks. While submitting to directories, have a close look at the PR and the quality of the backlink.
Make use of all tags in your pages like title, description, keywords, header 1, header 2, alt of images by focusing on 10 main keywords for optimization.
Install a sitemap script for your website if it has thousands of pages and set a cron to update it daily if you wish search engine's to crawl your site regualarly. You can find many such scripts on the internet today.
The more your websites content is unique the more chances are that it will rank at the top. So place your website content with some unbelivable words like for example - thought provoking content.
So start Submitting your articles now!
20 - tony scott
Forget dmoz your lucky ever if you get listed. but does anyone here beside dmoz knows good directory to submit.
21 - Malc
Very helpful article!
I am currently in the process of submitting my new health site, Fit and Trim UK, to Yahoo and DMOZ. Are there any other significant directories out there that are worth investing time in?
Malc
22 - Luisa
Big Up from Montreal !
I've been mixing dub tracks on my radio show for close to one year now, and I must definetly say that Twilight Circus Sound sites System is one of the most original, fresh and thoughful progressive dub sound system I heard so far.
KEEP ON DUBBIN for musicOs sake
23 - Lowload
Im very interested in knowing what other significant directories are out there for my site Lowload.co.uk - UK dedicated Servers
24 - Damian
Raul,
You gave a lot of valuable insight to people who are just starting to figure out where to begin with search engine submission and SEO.
I have found most often with my clients that many businesses out there don't pay any attention to the value that DMOZ and directory listings like Yahoo can have on your web site.
It gives you a chance to leverage some of the page rank that those web sites spend a lot of time and money on.
Damian
Tornado Technologies
25 - tony scott
How many people here will pay for dmoz. if dmoz was charging let's say 300.00 a year. I have submit my page beatyourprice.com in last two years in dmoz,no listing yet, I gave up with dmoz.