What is So Special About the Open Directory Project (DMOZ), Anyway?

DMOZ is an entirely volunteer edited directory, where every site is examined by an editor for suitability. To get a listing in DMOZ, is to have several legs up, in the race to the top of the search results. While there are a number of other important directories that are volunteer run, including JoeAnt, Gimpsy, GoGuides, and Zeal, Google places special emphasis on DMOZ.

You simply must get your site included in the Open Directory Project.

The DMOZ Directory: Get Your Site Listed – How to get your website listed in DMOZ

To begin your inclusion quest, go to the DMOZ web site, found at http://www.dmoz.org.

Finding the Right DMOZ Directory Category

The first step to a listing, is to check the various directory categories, and find the appropriate one for your site. As you can see, there are a lot of categories, and sub-categories, and sub-sub- categories. Be very thorough here, as submitting your site to the wrong category can result in very long waits, and possibly even rejection.

Don’t be afraid to spend a little time searching through the various options. I can’t stress this enough. You have to submit to the correct category for your site. One way to ensure you are in the right one, is to search through it. Look at the other sites listed there. If you don’t see any similar sites to yours, it’s time to check out another category. If you see some of your main competitors in that section, you will know you have found the right one. The time spent searching for the proper submission category will pay off for you. You are already well on your way.

Making Your DMOZ Directory Submission

When you have narrowed your target to the most appropriate category, go to it, and click on “add URL”. Be absolutely certain to read the instructions very carefully. They are not merely a suggestion. They are an absolute requirement.

Be sure to submit just your home page to only one category. Multiple page or category submissions will likely be treated as spam, and your site rejected. While there are occasional and exceptional sites and categories, that will accept your site more than once, they are rare. Don’t worry about it. It’s best to concentrate on one category, and get included, than attempt multiple submissions and find yourself rejected.

Avoid Automated Submission Software

Don’t even consider using any automated submission software for DMOZ submissions. Automated submissions are expressly against DMOZ policy. They will always be rejected. Continued use of automated submissions may get your site permanently banned from the directory. All category submissions must be done by hand!

Writing your website description

You will be asked to write a brief description of your website. This is not the place to be flowery and biased. Words like “best ever.” “greatest,” “finest site,” and so on, will be removed and your description rewritten. Be as objective as possible. Don’t fall for the temptation to pack your descriptions full of keywords. The editors will spot that transparent attempt at keyword stuffing immediately. If the editors think your description is too promotional, they will certainly change it on you. You can be sure of one thing: you probably won’t like their description. Your site may even be rejected entirely.

One way to be sure your site description will be accepted as written is to treat it objectively. Write your description the way an outsider would word it. Simply describe the content of the site and some features that benefit the user. A straightforward and honest description will find the most success. A good description is much less likely to be changed. Take your time here, as it will take a lot longer to get a bad description changed, than to write a good one from the start!

Completing Your DMOZ Directory Submission

Once you have found the proper category, and have written a good useful description, it’s time to submit your site. Before you press the Add URL button, make sure you have checked and double checked your submission for typos in the URL and description. A tiny error there could get your site removed from the lineup, or sent back to you for revision. That means a return to the back of the line too!

Be sure to write down the name of the category that received your submission. Take note of the category editor’s name and the date you submitted your site. You will need that information a lot later, if you have to check on the status of your site submission. The editors will expect it. If the category you submitted to has no editor listed, don’t despair. Your submission will still be examined by a more senior category editor

The DMOZ Directory: Get Your Site Listed – What to do while you wait for the DMOZ decision

Your site has finally been submitted. Now what?

Since the website submissions are accepted on a first come, first served basis, you wait. The waiting period can last anywhere from one week to six long agonizing months. Whatever you do, don’t decide to resubmit your site. At best, your submission will be moved to the back of the line, where the waiting period starts all over again. At worst, your site may even be rejected for spamming.

Resist the urge to resubmit your site. While the waiting period can seem like an eternity, you simply have to wait it out. Some categories have a huge backlog of submitted sites. Others lack editors to keep up with the volume of new sites. By having carefully selected your category, you are at least certain you don’t have to worry about being in the wrong one.

Improve Your Site and Content While You Wait

In the meantime, you won’t hear from DMOZ one way or the other. Keep checking their site each week for results. Keep updating and adding content to your website. The more original content your site contains, the more useful it will be viewed by the volunteers. The purpose of the DMOZ Directory is to be a high quality resource for the user. The editors will like your site a lot better, if you have a lot of pages of information. Your chances of approval will go way up.

Be sure you have no pages “under construction,” as the editors will reject any sites that aren’t ready for prime time. If you still have pages that are not completed, either remove them until they are ready for the public, or finish adding their content. Whatever you do, get rid of any “under construction” or similar red flag pages, that indicate your site is not fully operational.

Another important thing to do is to check over your site content for typos. While some keyboarding errors might not doom your site to rejection, having a professional looking site will certainly enhance your chances of success. Good professionally done sites, that feature a lot of original and useful content, are almost always accepted.

Help for Affiliate Site Aubmissions to DMOZ

If you have an “affiliate sales” website, be absolutely certain your site contains several pages of useful articles for your visitors. A site simply consisting of links and banners will almost always be rejected. Good relevant content is a must.

You must distinguish your affiliate site from the thousands of other affiliate sites out there. The way to do that is to add content. DMOZ requires original content. A single sales page doesn’t qualify. To add content, you could write reviews of the products you offer. You might want to discuss the problems your products and services address. Writing about industry news related to your products and services will also be helpful to your submission.

Followup with DMOZ Editors

If you sent your submission a few months ago, and can’t stand the wait, you can contact the category editor about your site’s status. Editors can be accessed directly through their Feedback link. Be sure to have that submission date and category information you wrote down handy. They will ask for it. They want to be sure you submitted to the proper category, and that you have given their volunteers sufficient time to look over your website.

A better route, however, is to ask a polite question on the DMOZ public forum.

You don’t have to be registered to read the forum, but you must register (free) to post a question. As always, be sure to read and follow the posting guidelines. Once again, you will be asked for the date of submission, category submitted to, and the category editor. Are you seeing a trend here’ Good records of your contact with DMOZ are a must.

While at the DMOZ forum, you can also ask some questions about their requirements and regulations. The editors will try to help you in every way they can. While they can’t specifically give you a date for your inclusion, they can let you know if you are in the proper category.

The DMOZ Directory: Get Your Site Listed – Wrapping up your DMOZ submission
If you followed all of the proper steps, your site will appear in the DMOZ Directory. As an added bonus, the DMOZ listings are collected into the prestigious Google Directory. They are also found in many smaller directories around the internet, providing your website with some much needed backlinks.

Your site might just get a boost in PageRank, and in searches for your most important keywords as well.

Happy submitting. It’s well worth the effort!

The New Scenario

The rules of the game have changed, and identifying the SEO rules is the name of the game. Thankfully, the new Yahoo SERPs still don’t show a marked departure from the existing Google algorithm, and the affinity between the two algorithms is still perceptible. This wipes out the need to make a fresh start while optimizing for Yahoo, and just weighing the Google SERPs against the Yahoo’s would suffice to make out the new algorithm Yahoo uses for ranking web pages.

Optimizing for Yahoo: The Next Big Thing – Yahoo and Google SERPs: Keywords and Link Text

Although Inktomi has not digressed much from the existing Google algorithm in formulating their own, the new Yahoo/Inktomi algorithm is not exactly a canned version of the Google’s, so the niceties that draw the wedge between the two algorithms need to be pinpointed to decipher exactly what works and what doesn’t for great rankings at Yahoo.

Keyword Density

When it comes to the significance of keyword density, it appears that Yahoo has a marked affinity for more keywords on the page when compared to Google. The analysis brings out the trend that most high-ranking pages generally have a larger number of keywords–primarily in the body text and title–than the pages that trail behind in SERPs. And interestingly, while the most high-ranking pages have an average overall keyword density of 9-10%, not all the high-ranking pages have that much keyword density; some have only 2-3%. This, in fact, is the upshot of the role played by backlinks, as will be explained later. Below is the breakup of various on-page factors and their respective keyword densities that make up the overall keyword density of a page:

• Title – 15 to 20%. (This is one of the most momentous factors in the current Yahoo algorithm.)
• Body Text – 2.5-3%
• Meta Tags – 2-3%

Keywords in the Link Text

Link/Anchor Text still remains the buzzword, even for Yahoo optimization, though Yahoo apparently treats backlinks and link text in a different manner than Google. The statistics gathered reveal that most pages ranking well for an ‘allinanchor:keyword’ search don’t always top the charts on doing a generic keyword search. This demonstrates that Yahoo doesn’t give exceeding importance to link text, contrary to Google, where ‘allinanchor:keyword’ and generic searches still yield somewhat identical results with a little change in the order. As stated earlier, good link building and appropriate link text need to be further supplemented with copious keywords in title and body text.

Optimizing for Yahoo: The Next Big Thing – Yahoo and Google SERPs: Subpages, Main Domain, and PageRank

Sub-pages vs. Main Domain

Interestingly, while the index pages optimized for a certain keyword using link text and all other techniques sometimes fail to make it in the top 10 SERPs, the internal pages of the same domain still manage to make the grade and rank in at least in the top 20 positions. Here’s how it works:

The algorithm first singles out the pages with most links pointing to them with appropriate link text (index pages in most cases). Next, it checks the keyword density (primarily in title and body text) of the pages filtered on the basis of the links and link text. Now, if the keyword density of the page is sufficient to satisfy a certain criteria, or if it can get the better of the other pages in terms of keyword density, then the page grabs a rank in line with the links and link text it has got. Otherwise, the algorithm locates another internal page of the same domain, which may not have been optimized using internal or external link text, but does have the sufficient keyword density in body text and title to appease Yahoo’s thirst for keywords on a page.

PageRank: The Old Recipe

PageRank being the exclusive Google trademark, it doesn’t now make much of a difference in Yahoo SERPs whether the PageRank of a web page is an impressive 8 or a paltry 3. Although the significance of PageRank in Google algo itself has stepped down significantly, it can still determine the fates of two pages at Google with strikingly different PageRank values. That’s no longer the case with Yahoo SERPs, and one can now comfortably overlook that green bar atop the browser window if the target is the Yahoo SERPs alone.

Conclusion

So the recipe to send a site rocketing high in Yahoo SERPs is this: get plenty of backlinks with appropriate link text, and then inundate the recipient page with keywords in the body text, title, alt tags, and wherever possible. Most probably, you’d have the feather in you cap of having your website thrive at Yahoo!

According to a Nielsen//NetRatings report released on February 23rd, search engine use in the United States increased to include one of every three Americans or, 39% of the US population! Specifically, 114.5 million unique users turned to search engines to find information about products and services in January, and each spent nearly 40 minutes there.

The heavy usage of search engines in January was no different from the reliance on search engines during the 2003 holiday shopping season:

• 36 % of those surveyed said they used Google during the shopping season
• 25 % used Yahoo! Search
• 14 % used MSN Search
• 5 % used either AOL or Ask Jeeves.

Not surprisingly, the top five search engines in January were:

• Google (59 million visitors)
• Yahoo! Search (46 million)
• MSN Search (45 million)
• AOL Search (23 million)
• Ask Jeeves (13 million)

What the Nielsen report did not indicate is the intricate connections between the main search engines and the results they provide to their partners. In January, Yahoo used to show the organic search engine results provided by Google. MSN Search provides organic search engine results provided by Inktomi, a Yahoo company. And AOL Search shows Google-provided search engine results. This complex interdependence between the main search engines makes current changes in the web search market place more intriguing.

Yahoo!’s New Search Engine – Yahoo Replaces Google as Search Provider

The impact of Yahoo replacing Google as search engine provider can be enormous on anyone’s web traffic. Until now, according to comScore Media Metrix, a Nielsen//NetRatings competitor, Google boasted market share of around 79% which included 16% through the AOL partnership and 28% through Google’s agreement to provide search results at Yahoo’s portal.

Yahoo, on the other hand, through its Inktomi subsidiary, has been providing search results to MSN. In addition, Yahoo through its Overture subsidiary owns AltaVista and AllTheWeb. The switch from Google-provided search results to Yahoo’s own search results at Yahoo Search implies a major shift in search engine market share — from 28% to 51% for all Yahoo search properties and partnerships.

While nobody argues the dominance of Google as the top search engine, now that Yahoo provides its own search results, it is only logical to anticipate that Google’s position will be diminished. This leaves Yahoo and Google as the two main search engine providers, leaving Ask Jeeves (and its Teoma subsidiary) with 3% market share and 2% for all other search engines.

What if you are not included in Yahoo’s index?

Currently, Yahoo provides two options to get your web content indexed in its new search engine: by using a free URL submission box available to its registered users (you would need to login to Yahoo to access that feature), or by using Yahoo’s paid inclusion program, Inktomi.

Yahoo claims that submitting a web link via the free URL submission box is considered only “suggestion” and not a guarantee that the page will be added to the index.

The only guaranteed way to have your content included is to use the Inktomi paid inclusion program. The pricing for Inktomi paid inclusion is as follows:

1st URL – $39
URLs 2-1000 – $25 each

Yahoo has not commented on the fate of its other search engines, AltaVista and AllTheWeb, which were acquired through the Overture purchase last year. Currently only the Inktomi inclusion will feed search results into the new Yahoo Search index.

Yahoo!’s New Search Engine – Yahoo Search is NOT the same as Inktomi

Submitting a URL to Inktomi is valuable because the results would feed MSN Search, at least until MSN Search develops their own search engine. In addition, an Inktomi submission would provide results to About.com and other partners.

However, the interesting thing about Yahoo and Inktomi is that, at least according to industry insiders, the new Yahoo Search is not a simple copy of Inktomi but rather an evolved, advanced form of Inktomi. As proof one can consider comparing the search results provided by MSN and HotBot both of which serve Inktomi results – they are certainly different from the results provided by Yahoo Search.

There are even claims that Yahoo will stop using the Inktomi database or paid inclusion after April 15 when a new Yahoo paid inclusion program will be made available.

This is what one of Inktomi partners, PositionTech.com:

“IMPORTANT NOTICE ABOUT INKTOMI SEARCH SUBMIT: “Yahoo! Search has transitioned to its own search technology and is preparing to launch a new inclusion program. As a bonus for Search Submit customers, Yahoo! Search is providing a free trial of Yahoo! traffic that will end on April 15, 2004.

“When the new inclusion program launches, Search Submit customers will have the option of joining the new program for ongoing participation in Yahoo! Search results.”

So what are we to do with all this confusing information? My opinion is to continue using Inktomi at least for the benefit of appearing in the MSN Search results and to have one’s options open for the April 15th planned introduction of Yahoo Search paid submission. Nobody knows if paid inclusion in Yahoo Search will be more expensive than the $39 Inktomi currently charges per URL, so putting some portion of your marketing budget for the new big search engine player would be wise.

Yahoo!’s New Search Engine – How to Optimize for Yahoo SearchJust before the launch of Yahoo Search, rumors started appearing on the renaming of the new spider. It is official now – it is called Yahoo Slurp and you can see its visits in your web server log file like this:

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp)

Yahoo! Slurp will continue to follow the Robot Exclusion Standard, so as long as you have your robots.txt file valid, you should be fine.

For more information on the new Yahoo spider, see http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp/.

What are the Yahoo’s site submission guidelines?

Yahoo! Search crawls the web every 2-4 weeks and automatically finds new content for indexing. If pages already in the Yahoo! Search index link to your site, it will be considered for inclusion in the next update of the index.

Not surprisingly, getting your site listed in major directory services such as the Yahoo! Directory and DMOZ is an excellent way to be sure that there are links to your site.

What is different in Yahoo-optimization from Google-optimization?

Careful selection of keywords, incoming links, title tags, header and keyword-rich content are of course going to be as important to Yahoo as they are to Google.

Yahoo cares about page descriptions. Google usually composes its own page description based on the text of the first paragraph of the indexed page. Yahoo wants you to have a unique page description and you should diligently follow their advice.

Specifically, Yahoo advises:

“Use a “description” meta-tag and write your description accurately and carefully. After the title, the description is the most important draw for users. Make sure the document title and description attract the interest of the user but also fit the content on your site. Use a “keyword” meta-tag to list key words for the document. Use a distinct list of keywords that relate to the specific page on your site instead of using one broad set of keywords for every page.”

Yahoo!’s New Search Engine – In conclusion
Yahoo dropped Google and this will impact anyone’s traffic. Instead of search results provided by Google, Yahoo is serving its own search engine results. They are different from the ones provided by Inktomi although Inktomi seems to partially feed results.

While we all wait to see what happens on April 15, when Yahoo will announce its own new paid inclusion program for Yahoo Search, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of having one’s web site submitted to Inktomi. In addition to partially feeding Yahoo Search, Inktomi currently provides search results to MSN Search, About.com, and others.

All these changes in the search engine market place should remind us all once again how important it is to monitor and maintain one’s search engine rankings.