Google are all about trust, by this I mean how much trust they have for your sites.
It’s a good idea to show Google you’re sites are trust worthy. This can be done is a number of different ways. In this post I’m going to look at one way, and therefore be discussing how to get listed in DMOZ.
DMOZ in my experience is hard to get into, and in fact I have tried before with this blog and not had any luck. Other sites I have, so it makes little sense to me. Before I discuss some of the things I’ll be doing to help make sure I get in, I want to discuss why getting into DMOZ would be a good thing in the first place.
Google knows that DMOZ is hard to get into, because every single site that is submitted is reviewed by a human reviewer. It’s all done by volunteeers also, as far as I’m aware. When there’s human review involved and no money spent to guarantee acceptance, then this is the best filter process for a decent site.
So Google ride on the back of DMOZ’s scrutiny and reward sites with better rankings that have been accepted into DMOZ. This is the same for all directories that have human reviewers and payment doesn’t assure acceptance, such as the Yahoo directory.
With that said, the more trust you have with Google the better, so it’s not a bad idea to try your best to get into DMOZ.
How to Get Listed in DMOZ
The first thing I do, is go to DMOZ and look for other sites that have been accepted already that are very close to what my site is about. Let’s say for example that you had an acne site, what I would do is type into DMOZ “acne” and see what sites they show.
In the image below, you’ll see a category for acne that one of the sites I found was in.
So the first thing you need to work out is what the best category for your site to go into is. DMOZ are super strict with this and if you submit to a wrong category, that can be enough to get your site denied and that’s the end of that. When you are confident you are on the right category page, then all you need to do is click the link “suggest URL” and fill out the form.
It’s also not a bad idea to have a look at the kind of sites that have been accepted in your chosen category and see if there’s anything that you can do to your site to help it’s chances. One thing I have done in the past is remove all advertising and affiliate links until DMOZ has accepted it, and then later add these back in.
Another important thing to realize when trying to work out how to get listed in DMOZ is that you can submit your sites again and again, as many times as you like when trying to get in. However you must keep in mind that when you submit your site it goes to the bottom of the pile for review.
What this means is that if you have submitted your site one day, and then you submit it again a week later, then DMOZ will recognize your domain from the first submission and remove it from the queue and leave your latest one there at the back!
So what I do is leave it for a month and then submit it again, and I keep doing this every month until I get in. Different reviewers get your site each time so eventually you might get in, and I need to stress ‘might’, because it’s never certain, and like I said I have yet to get this blog in, but I’m still trying and have a reminder in my outlook to keep submitting every month.
I think directory submissions are worth doing, as long as it’s not the kind of directories that guarantee a listing if you pay them, because I don’t think Google would care for that much, but other directories still have a good effect for SEO.
In closing if anyone has advice on how to get listed in DMOZ then please comment below, because I don’t claim to be an expert, I’m just sharing my plan and ideas.
Related articles
A while back I read the best way to get listed in Dmoz was to buy an existing domain that had a Dmoz listing. He went on to illustrate how he either pd $30 or $50, I forget, but a very interesting concept.
Matt Carter Reply:
October 11th, 2010 at 9:57 am
Hi Chuck
Yes that is something I have done and still do now, its a good idea as you can skip out the process of trying to get in, however if you already have a site that is important to you then I guess you just have to keep trying!
Great comment
Matt
Awesome Matt,
once again you have given us great info!
Thanks.
Aloha Matt, cool as usual, you always got some direct tools to help to enhance our business. good to see. Thanks for sharing! Lani 🙂
Matt Carter Reply:
October 11th, 2010 at 9:58 am
Aloha Lani!
Nice to hear from a regular commentor, and hope your business is going well.
Thanks
Matt
This is good information. DMOZ is not easy to get into and since it is manual they are going to scan each submission and weed out all the so-so sites and not let them in.
It is worth the effort to get listed in DMOZ since the “trust factor” is a lot better if you are listed there.
Thanks Matt
Matt Carter Reply:
October 11th, 2010 at 9:58 am
Hey Bill,
Great to hear from you also, and yeah I agree with what you say
Thanks
Matt
This is great Matt, thanks. I’ve still to achieve getting a site listed on DMOZ. Time to try again I think.
Hi Matt,
Do DMOZ give a reason why they deny a site listing, y’know some pointers as to what to change to get in? Or do they just leave you scratching your head at how enigmatic and cool they are?
Phil
Matt Carter Reply:
October 11th, 2010 at 10:00 am
Hi Philip
Unfortuntaly DMOZ don’t even let you know if they have looked at your site, it really makes it difficult to know what they want really.
Matt
Hello.
I’ve often wondered about getting into DMOZ.
Why not volunteer, and accept your own sites?
Hi, This is a very good post.
It is true that one has to be aware that when you submit your site it goes to the bottom of the pile for review. So try once and leave it for a while….(months a-while!!).
Google: *DMOZ check listed tool* is the best way to see if your site has been listed.
It took many years for my website to be listed (probably because I kept going to the bottom of the pile).
Matt Carter Reply:
October 11th, 2010 at 10:06 am
Hi Donna,
I have also made the mistake of submitting to often and getting sent to the bottom of the pile, its annoying!!
Thanks
Matt
I’m not too sure adding a post about “How To Get into DMOZ” is gonna help your chances of getting this site accepted (seeing that all sites are manually reviewed by human readers). But nice post anyway 🙂
Perhaps they don’t like SEO or Affiliate Marketing based sites that much?
I like the idea of taking down all advertisements first. That might help for sure.
Peace,
Jeremy
Try submitting your site every two months or even longer. Wait for an email from them telling you if your site has been accepted or denied. I waited 2 or 3 months to get something submitted before because there were that many entries before me.
You may be pushing your site back to the bottom of the list as you say in your post.
Your site is more popular than you may know. Believe it will happen and it will. Mindset is very powerful.
Your doing a great job. Keep up the excellent work.
darline
Hi Matt,
like your videos, you deliver good stuff….
and for Vic…
you give a great gift here, but where to login on your website? It only leads to paypal and no login….
anyhow thanks for the offer…
I have alway wondered how to get listed on DMOZ. You have provided valuable information that has helped me understand the basic process.
Thanks for providing this information on how to get listed in DMOZ. I have away wondered how sites got listed in DMOZ.
G’day Matt,
I find getting into DMOZ hard as the don’t accept
affiliate websites.
No matter how different it looks if it clicks through
to a sales or sign up page you get the boot.
You can have heaps of unique articles etc.
But if it is affiliate don’t bother.
Regards
Daniel
p.s. If someone knows away to do it put it
in a course or ebook and sell it.
Hi Matt, love your stuff, I got my site in DMOZ straight away by becoming the editor for the category. I was able to apply by saying I was an expert in the category and demonstrating I was there not just to market my own site. I did tell them I was registering my site first though : ) They even got in contact with me and asked that I edit a bigger category
Great tip Matt! Personally, I haven’t seen any of my submissions on DMOZ. By the way. how do you know when your site got admitted to DMOZ? Do they send you an email?
Hi Matt: Great suggestion !!! I´ll try it. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Matt,
I have been trying to get my site listed to DMOZ for a while also. I am looking for a good way also. If I find a good way that works I will post it here. Thanks for your great content, you always have on your blog.
Thanks,
Michael
Matts,
Thanks for this post. I saw a site occupying 1 & 2 positions on the front page of Google, it has over 800K local searches and over 1.2m global searches for one keyword per month and the funny part; it is not listed in DMOZ.
Importantly, the on page optimization done correctly with just over 635 back links to the page and 4142 back links to the entire domain/website. Also, they used the keyword as anchor texts that are pointing back to the site.
The most important thing is to get traffic, therefore, as we struggle to get listed in DMOZ., we shouldn’t forget to get our on page optimization done correctly.
Samuel.
Thanks for reminding me about directories again as being good for SEO.
Sorry about that Matt. I was about to hook you up with something pretty nice, but I see you took my post down. I will give you the secret to why I was able to retire under 40…
It was by doing the exact opposite of what you just did. I spun my wheels for yrs always with the what’s in it for me attitude…
When I started truly giving and sharing is when it happened for me. I won’t bother you anymore brother. Take care and much success to you eventually.
Matt Carter Reply:
October 11th, 2010 at 2:27 pm
Hi Blank,
I don’t think you can imply that I have the “what’s in it for me attitude…” have a quick look around and you’ll soon find people that have that attitude. I removed your comment because you were not participating in the conversion here, but instead were trying to direct people over to your site for your purposes, and I think that in fact is serving your own agenda.
You’re welcome to comment here in the future.
Kind regards,
Matt Carter
Hi Friends,
Yes – it seems to be a mysterious thing this DMOZ. Much like Google they don’t let you know what they are looking for.
I was on a webinar, and I can’t remember who was doing it, where DMOZ was discussed.
The suggestion made was to get local as it would be much easier to get in. For example: dog training in Seattle.
I have not tried it myself so I can’t tell but it might be worth the effort.
Best wishes
Rolf
Thanks for the post matt I was beginning to wonder if it even made sense to try to get in to DMOZ I had tried it on a few sites and never got in and kinda just forgot about it. Well I just gave it a try so well see what happens
Matt
Let me just say i have been trying for months, it’s just not worth the headache.
“One thing I have done in the past is remove all advertising and affiliate links until DMOZ has accepted it, and then later add these back in.” Yeah that could take years, and no earnings for your site.
DMOZ is good because G knows that they are very picky, but that is bad news for us, you stand more chance of winning the Lotto.
Hi Matt,
That waiting time delay could be very important. I was applying for an affiliate link to eBay and waited 2 weeks as suggested. I then gave up on that application and applied again under a different, but related, email address.
6 weeks later the first application was accepted and the second declined on the same day.
That’s 8 weeks to approve.
Graeme
Hi Matt,
I think my website is just too much of an affiliate site to ever make it into the Open Directory Project!
Hi Matt,
I used your monthly method, submitting a different site each month for 3 months, in the 4th month all three sites were accepted.I took 3 month,1 took 2 months and the third 9 days. They are hosted on same isp. Not sure if that means anything.
Regards
Alan
Hi Matt,
The DMOZ’s blessing from Google is our curse. It’s run by humans!
And they probably have a huge workload that gets bigger as the internet grows. Therefore where acceptance/denial time used to be a month a year ago, it might well be 2 months now (depending on the category).
Also DMOZ is not the holy grail (thank god) of search engine ranking and I agree with Samuel that well optimized, good content will get you ranked high, DMOZ listing or not.
One of my sites’ competitors has DMOZ, but is ranked lower than my site. I think only because my ranking page is properly optimized on page. Little backlinks, very on-topic content.
Well, you sure got the discussion going.
Cheers,
Andreas
The best way to get your site into DMOZ is to become an editor, it worked for me and its not that difficult. You will need to follow their guidelines but then you are encouraged to add relevant sites – including your own.
Nice post.. I am learning from you..I can spread this to this site
and tell my 96,000 followers about DMOZ!!!
Hi Matt,
I will try removing all the links and advertising banners. Funnily I have an acne site and I did look at DMOZ but the other sites put me off – they all look so authoritative!
Anyway, the site is almost 100% unique content but I have left it a bit the last few months because of my Halloween sites, but will get back and work on it again.
Thanks for the tip. It’s always a pleasure to read your blog.
Hi matt
hve been thinking of trying to get my site listed but think i need to build it out a little before hand. I think the more content the more likely to get a yes.
Annoying but that you don’t get told if your in or not
shane
Hi Matt!
Thanx for the great info! I keep all your emails as there’s a wealth of info there! I think I can make an ebook out of all that! LOL!
Talking of DMOZ, I just submitted my site on Friday. Will wait about a month and check again!
Keep up the good work!
Cheers!
The key point I think it should be realized, is that all the submissions are reviewed by volunteers with nothing to gain except maybe get their own site listed as reported above.
Affiliate marketing is all I do, and there is no way I will strip my site banners or affiliate links in order to wait a couple months on the premise of “Maybe” I’ll get excepted.
I believe this is far better to maximize SEO and link juice and let the chips fall where they may.
I have jumped over many sites with DMOZ listing just by having the correct domain keyword, meta-description, meta-keywords.
Your mileage may vary!
Getting a DMOZ listing can be a beast, thanks for the overview Matt!
I’ve tried submitting to dmoz many times and have never actually got a link in, I ahev one site with opver 17000 backlinks that ranks really well in mu niche. Its a mystery
I did not realise that DMOZ were so tough on affiliate links, I have a link to a site which is useful to my readers but I have no payment from them. Does this still constitute an affiliate link?
This was a really good reminder. I got one site listed a few years ago and then failed to get any more accepted. I must have got lucky with my first one as I didn’t realise you could re-submit. Thanks for the tip.
well…what can I say…?
thank you!
I just came back from listing my mom’s website to dmoz after reading this post of yours.
I won’t do anything else for at least 3 months following the what others have said above.
Hopefully they’ll send me a christmas email with our site listed as a gift!!!—)
cheers matt
Hello Matt
Excuse my ignorance here, but when you say take out affiliate links etc from your site, does this include adsense?
Thanks
Michael
buy a dmoz listed domain
Do you think a site not only rich in high quality content, but well up to date with the newest or latest info or technique,
would really impress those chaps at dmoz, !
Aloha Matt,
You always share great information for business use. I heard the same that DMOZ is impossible just about to get listed. This is great information to help with the already difficult process of getting listed.
Keep up the good work. I shall try my site but need to remove the Ads first.
Cheers
Social Wizard
If you have a really good, helpful, informative site, it is worth a shot, though I have seen it take months for a site to even get reviewed.
I think it is ironic that this site is having a hard time getting accepted – – yours is probably the best IM blog out there, seriously. The reviewers must not see beyond the obvious commercial intent, and don’t even realize the value of the content you provide here.
Hi Matt,
I heard that most of the “volunteers” reviewing websites are generally other affiliate marketers, which is probably why most marketers don’t get in, or have to apply many times.
You can apply to become a volunteer, which may improve your chances.
Cheers,
Ken
Thanks Matt. A great help… though in my case, after spending 30 minutes studying the Dmoz site, exploring the best way in to get listed I found I was already on the site. Dhuh! Must have done years ago.
But you are right in saying that there is some difficulty getting listed but having just gone through the process, I’d suggest that the key is in ensuring that some diligent searching is done through the many categories, sub-categories and extensions to find the most appropriate one comparable to your website’s subject matter.
It does take some searching though as the DMOZ site has so many categories and sub-categories. It’s worthwhile exercise though for sure.
Keep up the good work Matt. It’s very much appreciated.
Matt,
what have you done? Blank could have given you the secret to be successful like him? It might even have been Prince if he changed his name again to Blank.
On a serious note, I have also heard that Dmoz had some problems with editors who were not really doing the job they were meant to. I had read that they fell down a bit in Googles eyes and this year has been a cleanup and make or break year for them.
Any thanks for the info and tips, Matt.
Cheers,
Steve.
DMOZ is rather tricky and requires an obscure amount of patience, but getting your site listed isn’t impossible. When submitting your site you should look for categories that have been recently updated. This shows that editors are reviewing those categories. Nothing is 100% but this is a good place to start.
Thanks Matt! Dmoz seems like a bear to get into. Is buying a Dmoz listed domain the only answer?
Cheers,
Dr. Alex
Hello Matt, i m simply not able to get listed in DMOZ with some websites. I wonder if DMOZ is still working or not?
I think one commenter here put in in perspective: Concentrate on all the other factors and you’ll have a better chance of getting high rankings. A site can get listed in DMOZ without having good SEO and Google isn’t going to give it any Page Rank or positioning, DMOZ or not.
And more and more it seems affiliate marketers are getting squeezed out of places they (we) used to flourish. Adwords, WordPress.com, etc. So it would follow that DMOZ wouldn’t allow affiliate sites into their directory.
Owen
Thanks for the reminder. It was on my to do list. Now I just have to wait.
See Factor #81, on the following site, regarding what it may take (or what some people are doing) to get into DMOZ. Not sure if it’s true or not but find it quite interesting.
http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm
I just tried submitting my site under Business/Opportunities/Home_Based/
hopefully it gets approved! 🙂
I don’t know how many times I’ve been trying to get my website into DMOZ Directories with no luck.
This time, I’m going to remind myself to submit my website twice a month until I get accept. I think the key here is being persistent with whatever that you are doing until you reach your goal.
Thanks so much…Really appreciate it 🙂
Regards,
Dev
Hi everyone,
I once read a post from a guy who said he became a moderator, and then added his own site. I haven’t tried this, but it sounds like it could work.
Not only it is difficult to get listed your website in DMOZ, it’s impossible to become an editor. They just reject you without giving too much reasoning. Another upsetting factor is that there are no official rules about how to get the page rank you want.
I wonder how it feels when you realize that your site has been accepted to DMOZ. Sigh.
I don’t like DMOZ. There are tons of categories with no editors, and if you apply to become an editor, it’s almost certain that you will not be accepted, even if you apply for a category with one or 2 sites in it. Also, you don’t need to be in DMOZ to get high rankings on Google and Yahoo.
Matt,
Thanks as always for the awesome posts! I am going to attempt to submit my site now and see what happens! Wish me luck!
Thanks Matt, patience and keep on trying, unfortunately 🙂
Hi Matt,
It took me nearly 2 years to get my site on DMOZ and it was worth it. Such a powerful back link. I made the mistake to re-submit my site every 2 weeks for the first 8 months and then did it every 8 weeks.
The bad thing was that I kept submitting my site over and over and one day I checked if my site was listed and it was already. Yhea, they don’t let you know when they’ve submitted your site. Must have been there for a while…
I’ve also listed my site on NOMOZ.ORG which is a paid directory site.
Hey, thanks for the great info as always – you’re a champ.
Trevor
Interesting to learn about DMOZ. Seems like Trevor says, you need to just keep pecking away at it. It kinda of makes me wonder if it is worth the effort.. How much of an impact will this type of listing have on a site?
Hello Matt,
great post, clear talk and some very useful content! Thanks!!
I haven’t had the chance to try getting my website into DMOZ! But after reading your post, I will certainly give it a go!
Thanks again,
Viterbi
Getting into DMOZ is like winning in a beauty contest.
Thanks for that, I will try posting my site to DMOZ. I heard that it really getting you real free traffic. Cheers
Nice post and it is indeed a tough challenge to get listed in Dmoz. I think it’s just a case of perserverance, but I agree with what another poster has said about Dmoz having problems with affiliate sites.
I’ve been trying for ages to get my site listed. A tip is to see when the category you were submitting was last updated. If it was a long time ago there may be an inactive editor, so try again in an appropriate category that is better managed.
Wow! Thanks Matt… I am getting ready to make my first attempt at getting accepted 🙂 My understanding is that you would NOT want to post multiple URL’s per one website… So off, I go and I’ll be sure to report back if I have success 🙂 Thanks again!
Been trying for 5 years now, no dice so far
Thank you for that info. I am still learning the basics of SEO. I actually have also been using an autosubmitter for directory and links. Am I making a mistake with that? I did submit my url to DMOZ so will have to see… Thank you for this great blog! Much appreciated.
I have submitted my site twice over the last 6 months. Never heard anything back so I guess I should try again using your tips!
Thanks,
Nik
For most people, DMOZ is a waste of time as it is noted above so many people resubmit again and again. If your main goal is to get a “seal of approval” from Google, there are other methods that work just as well. Google has verification tools you can add to your own site that verify you are who you say you are …
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=8469