[This post is part of the Ultimate Guide to Launching a WordPress-Powered Blog series.]
I’ve covered how to add your blog to services like Google, Bing, and Yahoo! but there’s one more service that you’ll want to get into and that’s DMOZ.
What is DMOZ? It’s a community-run website and url directory that’s owned by Netscape and it’s been around since June 5th of 1998. Yeah, it’s nearly 13 years old!
But why should you even care? Here are a few reasons why getting into DMOZ is well-worth your time and effort (which isn’t much actually):
- Authority – DMOZ has been around for 13 years (and counting) and carries huge domain age authority so anything linked from DMOZ directly will get better SEO rankings.
- Links – There are tons of sites that link to DMOZ raising it’s own native PageRank and authority within the web. Your blog will directly benefit from all of this.
- Curation – Humans, not bots and software, curate and manage what gets into the directory and getting cleared by the editors of the categories is a big deal. Spammy links are not tolerated which keeps the quality of URLs at the highest. Of course, this benefits DMOZ and all the URLs listed.
- Other Directories – There are a bunch of other major directories that scrape and reuse the DMOZ data so any site listed will be listed elsewhere thus providing even more SEO and link juice.
- Search Engines – Google and other major search engines recognize the significance of DMOZ and consider it in their evaluation of your blog which can only be positive. If there was a “point” system for your blog’s SEO ranking then if it’s in DMOZ you’d seriously get a ton of “bonus” points.
Just consider the quality that DMOZ brings:
DMOZ has some serious power on the web.
Wow. That’s pretty darn impressive – you definitely want to be listed!
Get Listed in DMOZ:
Submitting is easy...
It’s actually quite easy to submit your site to DMOZ but it’s certainly not easy to get it approved.
All you have to do is choose the right category and then hit the “Suggest URL” on the top right.
Not bad, right? Just remember that it could take up to 6 months to actually get listed and it’s generally not recommended to try often just because you don’t see your site. You might get tagged as a spammer!
Patience is a virtue for sure in this case – you just have to wait and see.
Now you just have to wait... and with a little luck you'll get in.
Now to be sure it’s not necessary to be listed in DMOZ to get listed on the search engines – in fact, most people won’t try to get listed in DMOZ and be just fine and although historically DMOZ was used much more by Google to qualify site value and PageRank it’s not used in those manners any more.
And there’s definitely enough criticism out there that suggests that the editors are “corrupt” and some people claim that getting listed in DMOZ can actually hurt your rankings. My take is this: Go ahead and try and if you don’t get in don’t worry about it. Matt Cutts, a very trusted Google Search engineer shares the same sentiment:
[tentblogger-youtube rej2TkVEehg]
As you can by this search query I haven’t been indexed in DMOZ and I’m actually doing quite fine in terms of search engine ranking, results, and traffic:
Ah... sad. Oh well.
I’m not worried though. After you try submitting your URL you can try searching Google to see if you’ve gotten in by just using this search string directly:
1 | site:dmoz.org http://domain.com OR http://www.domain.com |
All good! Just try once a month and see if you get in. Good luck!
[This post is part of the Ultimate Guide to Launching a WordPress-Powered Blog series.]
I’ll try that!
Did any of the other blogs your run get accepted?
i’ve gotten a few sites historically in.
Hey John,
That is something to try out. It doesn’t hurt. Let me see my luck.
Cheers,
Jane.
sure thing!
Just curious… what category did you file tentblogger under?
blogs.
Um. thanks…..
I didn’t see that category…
but now I feel dumb ;^)
all good!
Submission received. Thanks for the tips!
cool! good luck with it!
Wow, great tip. Thanks!
sure thing melanie!
Thanks for explaining. I’ll try it but I don’t think my site will be accepted yet.
we’ll see, right?
Thanks for sharing, I’ll pu this on the list of things to do.
won’t take too long!
John, I tried submitting my church site in one of the local categories several times over a 3 year period with nothing, so I quit trying. Perhaps I just don’t understand the submission process. I would be very interested in seeing the fields you or others have used to get listed. (Thanks for all the helpful posts you publish.)
I need to add that we did get a local homeschool support group listed in DMOZ, but that was about 8 years ago. And to add, I haven’t tried submitting the church site again for the last couple of years.
hmm. yeah, unlucky i guess!
Great tip for sure. I’m going to try and see.
go for it!
Hey,
The moment I read it, I got myself to apply to DMOZ. Now waiting for the listing.
Thanks for providing the right directions.
Thanks and regards,
Ashvini
sure thing ashvini!
Site submitted. Thanks for the tip!
sure thing eric!. we’ll see, right?
Awesome advice. I’ve never had any luck getting “in”, but your post has prompted me to resubmit my site. One of the key things is selected the appropriate category. A lot of sites don’t make the cut because they are misplaced in the DMOZ taxonomy.
This is somewhat off topic, but I notice from the image in your blog post that you’re using SEOMOZ, could I ask whether you think it’s worth the $99/month price tag? Thanks.
i’ve used it on and off. unless you commit to using it fully it’s not worth ti.
It’s worth a try! Let’s go!
BTW… I noticed that this is a NEW part to an OLD series. Do you continually add new content to old series as you think of it?
yes. this is part of my strategy because i get bored fast on current series. i have to do multiple series at a time.
Me too! By the end of the month I’ll likey have 3 series running simultaneously.
ah, snap!
Thanks for the tip. I had no clue about this.
Submission made! Awaiting listing! Thanks John
Yay! I got listed!
congrats!