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.