How to get to the world-wide online catalog Dmoz

Check your site

Before sending a site to view the DMOZ moderator, carefully check all of its pages for missing graphics, links leading to non-existent or blank pages of the site, grammatical and lexical errors.

Moreover, your site should be allocated original content. If it simply contains links to different affiliated programs, you will find yourself in a difficult situation, because Open Directory does not object to such links only if the content is really worthwhile.

Select Keywords

You need to select a couple of the most important keywords according to their popularity and relevance to the site.

Title and Description

When you select Title, the Open Directory insists on the official name of your site. There are no options here.

When writing a description (Description), your goal is to make the DMOZ editor's work as easy as possible. You should not allow, if possible, of course, that the editor feels the need to rework or correct your description. If this does happen, there is a risk of losing the selected keywords from the description text.

Your description should consist of one sentence and contain the same selected pair of keywords as close as possible to the beginning of the description text. However, the description should not be just a set of keywords, it should be a meaningful finished grammatically correct sentence.

Description (description) - basic rules

- make sure that the description is sure to convey to the visitor information about what your site as a whole is; Phrases like "Welcome to my site" or "Look at our site" will not say anything

- Avoid deception of any sort, the use of ALL CAPITAL LETTERS or frequent exclamation marks !!! Phrases like "The best website for jewelry" or "We offer the BEST QUALITY DECORATIONS that can only be found" are inadmissible

- do not write every word in capital letters - in extreme cases only the first, if it is not about the names of your own

- write a description from the 3rd person: instead of "We offer financial and credit services" it is better to write "Proposal of financial and credit services"

- do not make the description too long - limit yourself to 15 words maximum; If you're lucky, you'll end up in DMOZ with a longer description, but in practice - the longer the description, the more likely that the editor will "edit" it

- check the description for lexical and grammatical errors

Select Category

Let's move on to selecting the right section of the directory for site registration. First, go to DMOZ and search for your 2 selected keywords. It turned out the category you chose at the very top? If so, go to this category and look - which are similar to your sites already present in it. Also, we pay attention to whether there are "Description" and / or FAQ sections in this category. Read these sections and decide finally - is this category of the catalog suitable for your site. If yes - we proceed to registration.

If in the search results for the keywords were not at all those, in your opinion, categories, we study others to choose the most suitable one. By the way, it can be so that, for your keywords, the Open Directory does not issue any sections at all. In this case, you have to choose the partition yourself.

You selected the desired DMOZ directory partition, clicked "add URL". We enter the address of your site in the first text field of input, the official name of your site - in the second, the description - in the third and your e-mail in the fourth. Although Open Directory declares e-mail as an additional field, it is very desirable to enter your e-mail address, if only in order, in case, for example, the non-acceptance of the site, the editor of DMOZ could tell you the reasons.

The site is not accepted, what should I do?

After sending the registration information, visit the selected category daily and monitor whether your site is accepted or not. If you do not see it, it may very well be that you are placed in a different category. Write the address of your site in the Open Directory search field and perform a search. In practice, sites are accepted within a period of 1 day to 2-3 weeks.

Some argue that it is necessary to wait several months before re-registering the site. Experience shows that you can do this in 3 weeks. If your site is not accepted and after re-registration, study it again. Are there any blank pages, links, pictures, etc.? Errors (see above). If you are absolutely sure that there is no reason for not accepting the site in the Open Directory, and the site has not been accepted within 3 months, then there may be 2 reasons:

I) The editor of this category is simply passive and does not do its work

Ii) He / she (category editor) is your direct competitor and simply does not want to "leaf" your site

Write to the editor

The first step in this situation is to write to the category editor. Refer to the lower section of the category page and click on the editor's name. If the category does not have an editor, go up one level in the hierarchy of DMOZ sections.

For example: you are trying to register a site in the section "Computers: Consultants: Business Systems", which does not have an editor at the time of writing the article. Then you need to go to "Computers: Consultants" and click on the link of the editor's name, and then send him a message.

You need to write to him about the failed registration and state the details: the selected category, your URL, Title and Description, which you used when registering. Ask the editor about their possible mistakes and how to correct them. If after 2 weeks you do not receive any response and do not get into the Open Directory, try to choose another close category and again repeat all the registration steps (see above).

Registration in several sections of DMOZ

If your site is already in the Open Directory, you can try to flood it in other sections. To begin with, you need to select again two more keywords, different from those chosen earlier. Then, in the same way described above, select a different category and send the site with a new description to the viewer editor. In case of success, your site will be registered in the new selected category, especially if its editor is different than the previous one. You can also try to re-register in a category by region.

Registration of internal pages of the site

The chances of successful re-registration increase when the internal pages of the site are registered in other DMOZ categories. Sending an internal page has the following advantage: its title (Title) does not need to be the name of the site itself, which allows you to include keywords directly in the Title.

Before sending one or more internal pages of your site, be sure to change the page names. This will increase the chance that the Open Directory editor will accept your descriptions. However - do not get carried away by registering internal pages - you can get a "penalty" (or be "off-beat") for spam. Do not forget - any page sent to the DMOZ editor should have unique content and be relevant to the category in which you send it.