The Open Directory Project - Your Key To Google's Heart

Let's start it simple: www.dmoz.org

Now, if I am lucky, you either didn't click the link or you did but you came back here to read my article. Either way, you want to know why is the Open Directory Project so important for your website and Google.

According to Wikipedia®, "The Open Directory Project (ODP), also known as dmoz (from directory.mozilla.org, its original domain name), is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links owned by Netscape that is constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors. ODP data powers the core directory services for many of the Web's largest search engines and portals, including Netscape Search, AOL Search, Google, and Alexa."

The Most Important Directory on the Web

A short definition of the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) is: "the most important directory on the Web". If you add "human edited" to the short definition, you've got it all. However, this "human edited" tag doesn't say it all. The "humans" are volunteers. Volunteering means you don't get paid for what you do, you do it for free. On occasion, these volunteers don't have the time to do their job, or just don't want to. That means your good submission may never make it into the directory or may get listed, but only after a long waiting period.

Assuming that the volunteers do perform their duties in time and correctly, there's nothing else against DMOZ. On the contrary: Google considers sites listed in the DMOZ important for the very reason that the directory is human edited. To get into the Google directory you need to be listed in the DMOZ. Other search engines, smaller than Google use DMOZ listings as well for their directories.

How to Get Listed

DMOZ has some very strict inclusion rules. Fail to follow them and you'll never see your site listed. Submit your site two or three times to the same category, other pages than the home page, and you'll get no results either. The editors don't tolerate spam, in any form.

You can submit to the Open Project Directory all kinds of valuable websites, including blogs. If you have good content, non-offensive, to the point, etc, you will get your site listed.

There can be one major problem after you submit your website: the waiting period. As the busy human editors do not notify you whether your submission was accepted or not, all you can do is wait, and this can take up to six months. It is not recommended to resubmit your website before the six months time limit (better make it seven), or you might have your website moved back to the end of the line, or rejected as spam. You may never really know what happened to your website, unless you are lucky and get an answer from the DMOZ public forum. Take care: the tone makes the music. So be polite.

If you are tempted to submit your website to a second category, think twice. Unless your website contains enough useful information related to the second category, don't submit it. You wouldn't like to have it rejected for spamming the directory, would you?

You might, however, try to submit your website to the DMOZ regional listings - but you should provide enough relevant content for the people living in the region: your local visitors.

About the Author

Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with http://HighPowerSites.com at: http://www.highpowersites.com

Directory Submission Service by Rcplinks.com

Is It Worth Submitting Your Site To The Directories

Directories are very popular and are widely used by people as a source of information. Web crawler search engines may also have better chances of finding your website if it is listed with any of these directories. Most of the directories charge a fee for listing your website. Some sites such as Yahoo offer free submission as well.

An important aspect of submitting your website to a directory is to have a 25 word or less description of the website. This allows the web crawler search engines to efficiently find and include your website.

Yahoo and Open Directory Project are some of the most popular directory services on the World Wide Web.

Yahoo provides two submission options: Free submission known as "Standard" and paid submission known as "Yahoo Express".

The free submission cannot be used for commercial websites. Also, with free submission there is no guarantee that your website will be approved for submission.

Submission of commercial websites can be done with Yahoo Express that has a fee of $299 per year. Although a majority of websites are accepted in this category, note that, paid submission also doesn't guarantee acceptance of your website. It only ensures an answer whether your site was accepted or not. For non-commercial websites there is a one-time fee of $299.

For submission of free non-commercial websites you will have to fill up a submission form that is displayed once you click the "uggest a Site" link at the bottom of each category. In case of paid commercial websites you would have to fill in the submission form.

Having your website listed with Open Directory is essential. It provides results to Google, AOL, Lycos and Netscape Search. Open Directory doesn't have a paid submission service. Commercial as well as non-commercial websites can be submitted to Open Directory absolutely free of cost. This, however, has its drawbacks.

There is no guarantee if and when your website will be approved for submission. Having mentioned that, Open Directory does generate high traffic for your website, once approved. Thus, submission to this directory is worth the uncertainty involved.

Submission can be done by using the "Add URL" link at the top of each of the categories. Generally, if your website is accepted, it would appear within the directory in about three weeks' time. If rejected, there is no limit to how many times you can resubmit your website.

These are three most important Directories on the World Wide Web. Getting your site listed on each of these is a must as it can lead to a significantly large audience for your website.

The maximum length of the Title of the website should be 60 characters for Yahoo and 100 characters for Open Directory.

Description of your website is essential for submission to any Directory. The maximum length of this description for Yahoo is 25 words or 200 characters and 25 to 30 words for Open Directory.

Yahoo requires that you submit the Title, description, Your name and Email for website submission and Open Directory only require the Title and Description of the website.

Yahoo allows a maximum submission for one category per website; Open Directory allow a maximum submission for one category per URL.

At the moment the top ten search sites - meaning both directories and search engines account for just over 93% of all search engine traffic. The other 6 something % is made up of hundreds of sites claiming to be search engines. Even at that the 11th - 15th biggest search engines make up most of that figure.

So what are the search sites you need to concentrate on?

Some of the top search engines are discussed above. There are a few others which are also quite popular.

The following is a suggested list of search engines and directories.

Yahoo.com Dmoz.com (ODP) Looksmart.com Google.com Alltheweb.com (Fast) Inktomi (AOL, Hotbot, MSN + more) Altavista.com Lycos.com Teoma Overture.com (GoTo.com) Paid Inclusion Directhit.com Askjeeves.com

About the Author

The SEO Company offers a complete Search Engine Optimization service and right now you can get a comprehensive ranking report for your website for free by clicking here

Manual Directory Submission Service

Benefits Of Web Directories

Web directories accept links from webmasters or site administrators seeking to submit their site for inclusion, the sites are then reviewed by a human editor who usually does a review of the site to determine its quality and content before approving it.

TYPES OF DIRECTORIES

General This directory basically consist of many categories divided into smaller categories and will include a variety of different website e.g. business, computers, health, etc. These directories can become quite large with the continual growth of categories and sites added.

Niche These directories are also known as specialty directories in which they specialize or cater to one category of products and services or themes. These directories are quite useful less overwhelming than the vast content of a general directory.

Paid A fee is charged for reviewing the submitted website, there is no guarantee of your site being approved and usually there is a no-refund policy (there are a few exceptions to this rule). Some others will simply include your site once the fee is paid, many webmaster prefer this method because of it's fast inclusion. Reciprocal There is a mutual linkage between two websites in order to ensure mutual traffic, the site submitting must place a link from their site before approval or inclusion. Please note this does not guarantee inclusion, beware of unscrupulous sites that approve your site then shortly thereafter remove your link.

Free As the name implies these directories are free and do not require a link back, sometime these sites do get backed up, the higher the page rank, the more popular the directory is, so submission and approval periods may be long, but these free directories are by far the best in my opinion, unless your have the means of paying for your site submission. Basically the benefits of any web directory is to provide your site with incoming links or reciprocal links a combination of the two links would be ideal in getting your site moved up in page rank. Getting your site indexed by spiders and search engines Bring targeted traffic to your website because visitors would already have an idea of what your site is about. Get higher ranking for targeted keywords. Help contribute to an increase in page rank.

Is the page rank of the directory you are submitting to important? Well I will have to say, yes, but this must not be the only factor in your decision to use that directory, for instance a directory may have a low rank because its new, every website at one time or the other started off with a 0 page rank, if we were all to spurn a site because of a 0 PR then we'd all be out of business. Ultimately the decision is yours but a site should be judged by the quality of the sites it contains, back links and content. CHECK DIRECTORIES FOR:

No Follow - there is a "no follow" tag associated with the link, meaning search engines will not follow the link. Uses Redirects Uses unscrupulous reciprocal methods- removing sites shortly after approving them to boost their own incoming links Links embedded in JavaScript and other codes that search engines can't follow.

Submitting to web directories is not the only means of promoting your site or building back links but it is a very important one.

About the Author

Karleen P. 32 yr female, located in Florida, USA. Web administrator of links-to-us.com
Free Web Directory

Why we need web directories

Before answering the question, let us discuss about the primary aim of any website. In spite of the subject or ideological differences, every website has a unanimous basic interest, to attract most number of people to view the site. Yes, web directories play their role in this mission to enhance the popularity of website. Now, the number of web directories is increasing enormously, because of its enhanced relevance in the present scenario.

Web directories are the platforms in which the websites are compiled according to their respective category. The main difference from a search engine is the fact that the individual websites are edited by human editors in a directory, where as search engines are tackled by programmed crawlers. In directories, the websites are categorized on the basis of their contents, into a particular category such as arts, sports, humanities, travel, parenting, automotives, news, and regional. Web directories attract more web viewers, as it can provide reliable and focused information regarding a topic. Remember, no machine is as powerful as a human; human editing will definitely improve the quality of the information listed in the category. Hence as a web viewer, we are inevitably in need of web directories, as a trusted resource of reference.

In the point of view of search engine optimization, web directories play vital role in the improved listing of the website in the search engine results. Usually search engine provide immediate preference to directories, while crawling for key word results. This attributes a cutting edge for web sites listed in the directories to be viewed, more frequently among the top listed sites. In addition, directories give a unique advantage of inbound link exchange. Most of the directories, allow multiple listing of the websites, which helps for improved chances of view ability. The enhanced effective web traffic from various IP blocks and domains, will ascertain the business motives. Inbound link exchange, the link in one way traffic, from a theme based website, will increase the reliability of the website and redeem its prospects.

Web directories and listing of the web sites in multiple directories are thus a necessity. The optimized web listing will help to tenure the best revenue. The anchor text in different format in multiple directories is an added advantage to garb additional links. However, keep in mind that 'all that glitters is not gold. Thorough assessment of the directory is essential before listing website, since many fraudulent directories are in the market. To harness every beneficiaries of a directory listing, do it in the recommended way, in a reliable directory, with domain experience for a pretty long time.

By Directory-Owners.com a Directory Owners Forum

About the Author

Owner of Directory-Owners.Com Forum. - http://www.directory-owners.com

Manual Directory Submission Service by rcplinks.com

How To Submit Articles Effectively For SEO

Today, no one can deny the fact that article submission has become a big trend in internet marketing to improve website's popularity on the net. There are thousands of articles, books and forum entries showing that submitting your article to as many article and ezine directories (article hosting sites) is the best thing you can do to increase valuable targeted traffic to your web site, and quickly grow your site's backlinks. In this article, you can find some ways that can help you increase the effectiveness as well as facilitate the process of your article submission.
* Well preparation before your submission: Prepare a short abstract and a list of keywords for your article. Not all article directories will ask for them, but when they need, make this abstract and the list of keywords ready to copy and paste. Besides, you may also prepare several different versions of your articles to prevent duplicate content recognition from search engines. Just replace some words by synonyms then you will have an identical article with readers but different one with search engines. Next, gather all the information which is required by most submission sites including: title, author name, pen name, word count... for author account creation. And last but not least, make sure you have reread and corrected all misspelled words or grammar errors before submitting your article because you will lose credibility with a lot of mistakes in your work.
* Making your resource box effective: This is the first reason of writing the article because it's the resource box which is going to bring targeted traffic and backlinks to your own website. Keep it short, concise and include the most important information - your name, a few attractive sentences about what your site offers and the most prominent link (URL) to your website. If an article directory supports HTML code (or Rich Text Editor support), don't type your URL in its entirety. Use it with the anchor text (keyword) that you want to build backlinks for. With different directories, you should vary this anchor text which points to different pages in your website. Of course you must accept the policy of article directories, do not overuse or abuse with your resource box.
* Using clear format for your article when submitting: Write an article as simple as possible with a clear structure. It's better to avoid complex HTML tags, images, affiliate links and special characters. Make certain to well check the guidelines of different article directories and follow the minimum or maximum article length, general layout and style. If you are allowed to use HTML (or Rich Text Editor), you should use some basic tags such as (b)old, (i)talic, (br)eak line, (p)aragraph, (a)link to make your article more attractive. Besides, pay attention to your headline since it is the most efficient thing you can do to get your article read. In the headline, you should highlight a problem or state a solution that your readers are looking for.
* More is better: There are thousands of article directory on the Internet. So the more directories you submit your article to, the more backlinks you can get. It's better if you have prepared a list of all article directories appropriate to your article. With the keywords "article submissions", "articles directory" or "free articles", you can find on search engines thousands of article directories welcoming you to submit your own articles. On the Internet, besides of big articles directories, there are a lot of small directories which you cannot find out with the above popular keywords. Most of them are based on the same software such as Article Dashboard, Article Beach,... so with the keyword "Powered by Article Dashboard" you can get a list of all article directories which use Dashboard System.
* Checking your article's exposure and maintaining your list of article directories for the next submission: Almost all article directories are based on human editors. They need time to read and approve (or reject) your submitted articles. So, the appropriate time to check your article's exposure is about 2-3 weeks after submissions. You can check by either using search tools (if exists) on article directory or using quick indexing and updating search engines such as MSN. This step is very important to make sure your article's format is correct and the resource box is included. In addition, this is also the step to evaluate the article directories: are they still managed or abandoned? Are your articles suitable for these sites? The collected information from these checks will help you maintain a reasonable and useful list of article directories for the next submission.
In this article, I've provided you with some basic but effective tips to come along your article marketing campaigns. Article writing and submission bring benefits to all authors so it should not be underrated. If your articles are not written, and submitted effectively, plenty of efforts can be wasted.
Happy writing and submitting articles!

Article Source: http://www.kokkada.com

Article by Mike Pham of TopTrafficWholesaler.com, a complete service website advertising agency. Offers quality web traffic service in the form of various banner display ads and full web page ads to increase site sales.

Article Submission Service by rcplinks.com

Link Popularity - Improve Your Rankings

Link popularity is a very important part for your search engine rankings.

The link popularity greatly influences the way that search engines rank your website. Google for example has something called a Page rank which they assign to each website and to each individual web page. The page rank in turn affects the position that your website will rank in the search engine results for any particular keyword or key phrase.

Link popularity is normally used as a term that describes the number of links as well as the quality of links that lead to your website from quality websites that relevant to your site content wise. Although Google has recently start placing less importance on inbound links due to link farms and paid link networks, inbound links are still considered to be of the upmost importance for search engines when ranking a website and its link popularity.

The search engines view an inbound link as some form of testimonial which shows that a specific website has some form of quality content worth linking to. In recent times we have seen the strong growth of blogs and blog networks. Due to the strong habit of bloggers to link to one and other, many blogs have been able to reach very good rankings.

The webmasters of e-commerce sites quickly saw the trend and jumped on the band wagon so as to increase their link popularity. Unfortunately due the large number of webmasters and marketers having abused blogs by link spamming them, the search engines are now frequently skeptical when it comes to inbound links from blogs.

For those of you that are new to the Page rank system, the easiest way to check the page rank for any website is by downloading the Google toolbar for either Internet Explorer or for Firefox. After installing either one, you will be able to see a small box in your browser which indicates the Google Page rank for any website that you visit.

Step 1 – Finding relevant and highly ranked websites

The best way for raising your link popularity is by getting an inbound link from a website which is ranked well and has content that is relevant to your website or that complements it somehow.

I advice all my readers to stay well clear from link exchanges, networks and link farms. History shows us that the search engines find out about this in the end (especially Google) and this can lead to dramatic actions from their side. The punishment can include even deletion of your website from their search engine and will ruin your link popularity.

Once your website is banned from one of the major search engines it can be a very long process to get re-included. It does happen frequently that a website is not allowed to be re-included in the search engine which is a nightmare for any website as it seriously reduces the potential traffic volume that a website could attract.

This might be a good time to warn you about shady search engine optimization firms with a bulk of them coming from India. These search engine optimization firms promise top 10 Google and Yahoo rankings and lots of other promises which seem to be good to be true. These firms often use black hat SEO tricks to increase the ranking of their client’s websites.

The problem is that they will not give you the top 10 ranking most likely and secondly once the search engine finds out, you will be more than likely deleted from the search engine results.

Frequently if you ask these firms about this they will tell you that everything they do is completely legal and that they will do miracles for your link popularity.

Those words won’t help you very much though once they have done their damage and managed to get you delisted from the search engines. You won’t hear back from them once that occurs and all your efforts in regards to link popularity will have been a waste of time.

Just work on your link popularity yourself and start slowly. Search for sites which clearly are sites with similar content and high page rank or look for sites that are affiliated with government websites or educational websites as the search engines seem to hold those links in the highest regards.

2) Requesting an inbound link

Obviously the other site their webmaster needs to be made aware of your site so that they can consider linking to your website.

The easiest way to do this and hopefully improve your link popularity is through sending an email to the webmaster or website owner with a request for a link.

It’s very important to customize each email and for the email not look like a generic email as people really hate that. You will find that the positive reply percentage is much higher this way compared to some standard email which you send out.

We have created a few tips for creating this link request email which should lead to higher link popularity.

• Try obtaining the email address of the relevant person rather than sending it to info@example.com as your email might end up in the spam or delete box.

• Be careful what you write in the email and the subject title as certain words link exchange might trigger a spam filter or possibly takes away the interest of the recipient to read the email.

• Be straight forward on what you are asking for from the other person and try to list some positive reasons on why the link would be beneficial to both parties.

• Try to include some personalized items in the email which shows that you have read through their website and that you really are interested in dealing with them. This will certainly lead to an increase in link popularity in the long run.

• It’s more than normal that you will be required to give a link back. If you are the one initiating the contact then you should place a link on your site which links to their site first. This will show a sign of trust and will most likely lead to a backlink to your site.

If however they do not reply after some time you should remove the link to their site as it will have no benefit to your link popularity efforts.

For the remainder of the tips and advice please visit the authors website where the article continues. The remaining section of the article can be found here: Link Popularity

James has been a long time member of the SEO and Search Engine Marketing community and is a regular contributor to the free marketing advice site: Explainsall.com