When you submit a website to search engines, most search engines automatically crawl websites looking for links and popularity of the sites they crawl to determine how they list on search engine results, one site that doesn’t is DMOZ. Also known as the Open Directory Project or ODP, this directory is entirely monitored by people (volunteer editors), this means that you have to submit your site and wait for somebody to physically look at your site. This process can take weeks, months, or even in a few cases years, so why bother with this site at all? 

For starters it’s where Google goes to index sites (you know you’re big when Google is copying from you) the site is the biggest human edited directory out there today, this translates to one massive back link and potentially lots of traffic. 

On the downside only about 10 to 20 percent of all the sites that submit their address get accepted. This is because the vast majority don’t take the time to properly submit their site, and get rejected. So here is a guide of some things you need to consider if you want your website or blog listed on DMOZ. 

1. First is your website even able to be listed on DMOZ. If you have a site that contains illegal content such as copyrighted material, little to no actual content, and your site is more affiliate links then usable information you can pretty much give up on hoping to get listed. Remember when you submit your website to DMOZ it’s not a bot but an editor that’s looking over your content. 

2. Is the site you’re trying to submit already listed, if so congratulations because you don’t need to submit it again you simply have to update your listing. Also don’t submit “mirror” sites. These are websites that have two different URL’s but the same content. 

3. Make sure the site you’ve submitted is in the right category. For example if you have a website that talks about how to rebuild car engines in English, don’t list it in a Japanese listing for making paper swans. Pick the right language, the right category, and the right sub category which is just as important. 

Because DMOZ is human controlled if you happen to submit you’re website or blog in the wrong category (and from my understanding this happens a lot) two things will happen. If you’re lucky your suggestions gets moved to the right category, is reviewed, and if everything looks good you get listed. Or what will mostly likely happen is your suggestion is dumped and you won’t get listed. It’s important to remember with submitting to this directory once you submit your site the confirmation you receive is the last contact you’ll have with them. If your site gets approved or denied you won’t hear anything. 

However there are ways to check if your site has been listed. Simply type in “DMOZ listing checker” on Google and a couple hundred thousand results pop up. One that I like though is at Kinkai.com , they not only provide a DMOZ checker but Alexa toolbar download, and about a half dozen other useful tools. Another site you might want to consider checking out is Searchenginegenie.com which offers a DMOZ checker plus dozens of other things you can use to check the status of your website. Hope this helps, if it did please stumble this page.