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Submitting Your Site to the Open Directory
By Sumantra Roy (c) 2005

Getting your site an optimum listing in the Open Directory
(http://www.dmoz.org) is vitally important as far as search
engine positioning is concerned because Google assigns a lot
of importance to sites being listed in the Open Directory.

Before you submit your site, go through your entire site
and ensure that there are no missing graphics, no links
leading to empty or non-existent pages and no "Under
construction" symbols. Also, check for typos and
grammatical errors. Furthermore, your site must provide
good content. If your site simply contains links to various
affiliate programs, you will find it difficult to get
through. The Open Directory does not mind sites containing
links to affiliate programs, as long as you provide proper
content.

You now need to select the two most important keywords for
your site based on their popularity. If you don't yet know
the keywords which are applicable for your site, have a
look at my article on "Choosing the Correct Keywords for
Your Site", available at
http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?3455_d&keywords.htm
In this article, I have mentioned that while selecting the
keywords for your site, you should look at both the
popularity of the keywords as well as their competitiveness.
However, for the purpose of this article, don't worry about
the competitiveness - select keywords only on the basis of
popularity.

We now discuss how you should write the Title and
Description of your site's listing in the Open Directory.
You don't really have much choice regarding the Title since
the Open Directory insists that the Title be the official
name of your site. There is no way around it.

When you write the description, your aim should be to make
the Open Directory editor's job as easy as possible. You
should not give the editor the feeling that he/she needs to
edit your description in any way. The moment an editor
starts to edit your description, you risk having your
keywords removed from your description.

Your description should be a single sentence which conveys
what your site is all about and contains the two keywords
you are targeting as close as possible to the beginning of
the description. However, your description should not just
be a list of keywords - the description that you use should
be a proper sentence and should be grammatically correct.

Broadly, here are the rules that you should remember when
forming the description:

i) Make sure that the description can tell a visitor what
   your site is all about. Things like "Have a look at our
   site" or "Welcome to my site" does not tell a visitor
   what your site does.

ii) Avoid hype of any sort. Avoid using ALL CAPS or
    exclamation marks. Phrases like "The best web site
    dealing with widgets!!" or "Offers the BEST QUALITY,
    CHEAPEST WIDGETS you can find anywhere" are
    inappropriate.

iii) Don't capitalize every word in your description -
     capitalize only the first word. Of course, if some of
     the words in the description are proper nouns, then you
     should capitalize them.

iv) Write the description in the third person. Don't say
    "We offer financial planning and credit counseling
    services", say "Offers financial planning and credit
    counseling services.".

v) Don't make your description too long - limit yourself to
   15 words at the most. If you are lucky, you may be able
   to get accepted with a description longer than 15 words.
   However, the longer the description, the higher the
   probability that the editor will want to edit it.

vi) Check your description for typos and grammatical
    mistakes.

vii) End your description with a period. If the editor has
     to add the period to the end of your description, she
     may also end up editing the description, which is not
     what you want. Your aim is to have the editor accept
     the exact description that you had written in order to
     ensure that your keywords are not removed from the
     description.

Now, we come to how you can select the right category for
your site. Go to the Open Directory, and search for the two
keywords you have established. Does a particular category
come up at the top for both the keywords? If so, go to that
category, and see whether the sites present in the category
are similar to yours. Also see whether that category has a
Description and/or a FAQ. Read them and find out whether
that category is applicable for your site. If so, this is
the category you should submit your site to.

If different categories come up at the top for the two
keywords, go through all the categories and find out which
is the most appropriate category among the different
categories.

For some keywords, you will find that the Open Directory
does not display any categories. In this case, find out
which category most of the top sites belong to and submit
your site to that category, assuming it is applicable for
your site.

Once you have selected the right category, click on the
"suggest URL" link at the top. Type in the address of your site
in the first text box, the official name of your site in
the next text box, the description that you have earlier
developed in the third text box and your email address in
the fourth text box. Although the Open Directory says that
including the email address is optional, I would recommend
that you include it - if, for some reason, your site is not
accepted, the Open Directory editor may want to tell you
why your site has not been accepted.

What To Do if Your Site is Not Accepted

After submitting your site, go to the category where you
have submitted your site every day and see when your site
gets listed. If you find that your site is not in that
category, it may so happen that you have been placed in a
different category. Type in your domain name in Open
Directory's search box and see whether your site comes up
in the results. I have seen some sites getting accepted
within 1 day and some sites in about 2-3 weeks.

If your site has not been listed after three weeks, then
re-submit it to the same category and wait for another
three weeks. If your site is still not accepted, then have
a look at your site again. Does it contain any missing
images or links, links to empty pages or under construction
signs? Does it provide good content? Does it have any
spelling or grammatical errors?

If you are absolutely convinced that your site is eligible
for being accepted by the Open Directory, then the fact
that your site is not being accepted may signify one of two
things:

i) The editor of that category is inactive, i.e. he/she has
not been reviewing sites for a long time.

ii) He/she is your competitor, and does not want to list
you.

In this case, the first step is to write to the editor of
the category. Scroll down to the bottom of the category to
which you are trying to submit your site and click on the
name of the editor. If that category does not have an
editor, go to the category above that in the hierarchy. For
instance, suppose you are trying to submit to the
Computers: Consultants: Business Systems category. At the
time of writing of this article, that category did not have
an editor. In this case, you should go to the Computers:
Consultants category and click on one of the editors there.
Click on the "Send to editorname" link, and in the Comments
field, write a very polite message to the editor. Tell her
that you have been trying to submit your site to the Open
Directory and you have been unsuccessful. Give her the
complete details of your submission, i.e. the category to
which you submitted, your URL, the Title and the
Description that you used and the dates on which you
submitted. Ask her as to whether there are any mistakes
that you are making and whether she would be kind enough to
point out the mistakes to you so that you can correct them.

If, after two weeks, you don't get any reply from the
editor and are not accepted into the Open Directory, then
look for another category which is applicable for your site
using the method outlined earlier and submit your site to
this category.

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Article by Sumantra Roy. Sumantra is one of the most
respected search engine positioning specialists on the
Internet. To have Sumantra's company place your site at the
top of the search engines, go to
http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?3455_d . For more
advice on how you can take your web site to the top of the
search engines, subscribe to his FREE newsletter by going
to http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?3455_d&newsletter.htm
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