Why Googbies Love DMOZ Listings

Although it's impossible to determine just how helpful a DMOZ listing is to a Website's search engine rankings it's widely believed that a listing in DMOZ is worth the effort. And effort it is!

There are sob stories all over forums about how long Googbies have been submitting sites to DMOZ with no success. But, as the owner of a site listed in DMOZ I can tell you the traffic it drives is 2nd only to Google and although the site hasn't been through a pagerank update since it was listed I'm hopeful it'll help solidify my homepage rank and raise my inner page rankings. Even without the SEO help it's gratifying to know that my site is inside the inpenetrable DMOZ walls.

In addition to driving traffic it seems a lot of sites add some of the DMOZ listings to their sites increasing the number of backlinks. This makes Googbies happy.

Bottom line is you should try hard to get your sites listed on DMOZ. Here are some suggestions that will help avoid rejection:

- READ THEIR GUIDELINES!
Note the part about NOT submitting sites that contain content already represented by sites already listed. THIS I believe is the main reason most sites don't make it in.

- Submit the link to a REGIONAL category that matches. It's thought to be easier to get into a regional category and once there the editor can move the listing to a main category. Think of it as the kitchen door. The people in the kitchen are always nicer and the line to get in is much shorter.

- Find the category that best matches and submit it there. Once again, place it in the MOST appropriate category. These people are busy so don't give them a reason to reject your submission.

- Your title should be your business name or title. "Googbies" is an example. "Googbies SEO Blog" will NOT pass.

- The description should be written as if you're a reviewer and not the VP of Sales. Title = "Googbies" Description = "Blog offering Webmasters and Website owners information and advice on improving the pagerank of their Websites." Notice that I didn't include the name of the business in the description.

- A few weeks later submit your site to a non-regional category that fits well. If your regional submission was accepted use the rewritten title and description if they were altered.

- Now that you've attempted the impossible move onto other productive SEO tasks. Forget about it for awhile and don't be too disturbed if the submission is forever lost in cyberspace. Save the description you wrote for DMOZ and use a similar one whenever you add your link to other Web directories.

Good luck Googbies!