| Guidelines Remember, 20 pics and 1 banner per pic are the MINIMUM guidelines. To increase you chances of being listed, try adding more pics or less banners. You should consider this especially if you are using full and half page adds or consoles. Several sponsors provide free feeds, free daily pics, chatrooms and games that you can add to your site. Make use of some of these things to make your site stand out from all the others. Remember, just because one editor accepts a marginal site, there is no guarantee that it won't be deleted by another. Site Design A well designed site with a good theme stands a much better chance of getting listed than a site that is just slapped together with the minimum requirements. Again, the categories are constantly checked by several editors and marginal sites accepted by one editor may be deleted by another. Getting Good Listings Some search engines (especially AOL) use the keywords in the listed title and urls of the sites to determine how high they will show up in searches. Editors are required to use whatever title you submit as long as it's the same as the title the surfer sees when he looks at the page. The only exception is if the title is blatant spam. Good 3 or 4 word key phrases will almost always be accepted. By using the same and similar key phrases in your urls (http://domainname.com/key-word-phrase/key-word-phrase/keyword.html), You can greatly increase your chances of getting a good listing at the search engines/directories that use the DMOZ index. Descriptions To a lesser degree, AOL also uses words in the descriptions to determine rankings. One of the new rules at DMOZ is that editors can no longer repeat title keywords in the descriptions (unless the site can't be described without doing so). Existing descriptions that don't comply with the new rule are being changed. This new rule has been put in place to make it more difficult for editors to rank their own sites well and it will be much fairer for everyone. The best way to get a good description is to insure it accurately describes what's on the site. Inaccurate descriptions are the most common reason they get changed. Resubmitting a Site If a site has been refused and you make the required changes, email one of the editors of the category and let them know what changes have been made when you resubmit. another option is to resubmit the site and add a note to the editor in the 'description' field outlining the changes that were made to the site. Where can I get more information on DMOZ? You can get a lot of information about the ODP by reading the DMOZ thread at: Search Engine Matrix Lady X DMOZ Help Board General information about DMOZ can be found here: About DMOZ |