How DMOZ can help you?

All of us would have heard of DMOZ which stands for Directory Mozilla which is its original domain name. This is also known as The Open Directory Project. It is important to have your website submitted to DMOZ. Submission is free here and all submissions are without exception reviewed manually. So while submitting to DMOZ you should be careful about what you are submitting. If at all you want to get your site accepted by DMOZ you must stick to all the DMOZ guidelines. Try to submit your site to the right category to avoid unnecessary delays.

DMOZ supplies its listings to thousands of other directories on the web through its RDF file. So its worthwhile to take all the necessary steps to get your site accepted by DMOZ. If you want to get good position in Yahoo, you must make sure that you are accepted by DMOZ. It is said that Google too has certain soft corner for websites listed in DMOZ. Moreover, even Google’s directory uses DMOZ data and we again know that getting listed in Google directory will do a world of good to your website.

It is noticed that listings from DMOZ directory do well in search engines; DMOZ listing will generate highly targeted traffic because DMOZ’s listings get good visibility in search results and this will generate more traffic.

If you have observed the pagerank of DMOZ, you will be able to notice that the pagerank which is received from the root level PR. DMOZ has a general PR of 9 and many categories inherit this PR and it ranges from anywhere between 4 and 9. So you will find favor with Google. If you are lucky you will be able to get good anchor text when you get listed in DMOZ and if this happens it will pep up your site’s performance for that keyword.

One of the drawbacks of DMOZ is that you may not be sure how long it would take your site to get reviewed and included in the listing as this is a manual process. DMOZ has been very particular from day 1 about manual review of sites even though it is a time consuming process. Since DMOZ depends or voluntary editors, to get an editor for your specific category may consume more time depending on how competitive your area business vertical or your category is. You should learn to be patient with DMOZ and you cannot do anything but weight.

If the benefits that you are going to get from DMOZ is going to be high then waiting is certainly worthwhile. Unlike most of other directories, DMOZ as a manual directory you must make sure that your site is visually appealing as well. Since it is free you are not going to lose anything by submitting your site to DMOZ; do a basic check on your site to ensure that it complies with general website development standards . Do every thing within your reasonable limits and see how you can get listed in DMOZ so that you can reap the benefits.

Using Social Media to Drive Traffic

Tools to use
At the BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas, Don Crowther, founder of SMARTS, spoke about using social media to bring traffic to your Web sites. (WebProNews will be spending the weekend in Vegas. Bummer, right? But we will be working, reporting from the BlogWorld Expo and chatting up the brightest minds in the blogging business. Stay tuned to WebProNews and WebProNews Video for updates.) He said social marketing is “using social media to actually do what you want them to do.” Statistics show that Facebook is almost as big as Google in pageviews. YouTube is double in page views according to Alexa. Facebook adds 100-250K new viewers each day. Forty-one percent of all Facebook members are 35 and older. Crowther said the “average competitor is clueless and this is how you can get the competitive advantage.” “Social media has made it possible for you to get into Google without being a rocket scientists.” Crowther offered a series of tools to use to generate traffic using social media.

  1. Smarts Tool #1: Squiddo (It monetizes, builds links and content)
  2. Smarts Tool # 2: Hubpages: (Content sharing site, may outpull your blog, but 60% of revenue share)
  3. Smarts Tool #3: Create your own Wiki
  4. Smarts Tool #4: Twitter
  5. Smart Tool #5: Create online video
  6. Smarts Tool #6: Facebook Pages
  7. Smarts Tool #7: Digg

WebProNews Reporter/Anchor Abby Prince-Johnson contributed to this article.