Call yourself a professional?

I do, though only when referring to what I am professional at, i.e. helping clients rent a perfect holiday property in France through my website.

However, I am not a professional of web-initials including SEO, DMOZ, CPT, CPM, PR etc.

As a self-confessed amateur at all of this, do I pay one of the many thousands of so-called 'professionals' upfront to get people to visit my website - which no-one can guarantee!! - or do I try and work it our for myself?

Well, as I am reasonably intelligent and a keen DIY-er at home, I thought I'd look into DIY directory registration and general DIY SEO. I keep coming across individuals & companies who tell me I am crazy to try and do it myself, fair enough, but I think handing over money to someone for potentially nothing is crazy too, is it not!?!

If an individual or a company was that capable of succeeding then why don't they do SEO on a "pay me for the results I give you" way? If they took on my company and only got paid when I did, then I would trust them to be doing all that they could to get me to the top of the search engines. If they succeeded, they'd be paid, and if they didn't succeed at what they are allegedly professionals at, then they would not be paid.

Is this a dream, or are there SEO people / companies that are professional enough to be judged and paid for by their results alone??

You're going to want to ask that question in an SEO or webmaster forum. This forum is really just for ODP-related topics.

Hi Motsa

Thanks for your reply. It seems there are lots of intelligent SEO administrators and professionals in the resource zone. I believe this topic to be relevant to ODP.

Why?

Because, I am told know that I should have my website in the ODP. I do not know why, and I do not know how to get my site towards the top of all the search engines. So many companies claim it is possible, but I don't want to waste time and money on nothing, and so thought I'd use this forum to ask whether the ODP is important, effective and worthwhile.

If the ODP is an important tool for a company's website, whilst the ODP system is down, I raised the subject to see whether any professionals could help an amateur like me understand its importance.

I'm a learner, willing to learn.

If the ODP is an important tool for a company's website

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The word is IF.
The ODP is not a tool for website promotion.
It might be that it has some influence in that field but that is all a side effect we from DMOZ don't care about.

lol, I happen to be just as ignorant, tgolding, and I appreciate your post as I feel the same way, but, as motsa has pointed out it's not really what we discuss here.

As far as the ODP is concerned, one of the things I really like about it, is the fact that just plain Joes like yourself can make a site suggestion at no cost to yourself, and be assured that it will be given the same equal consideration that any other site suggestion will be given, you're on the same level playing field.

We cannot be bought, bribed, or intimidated by anyone who expects favoratism or any other kind of "special treatment" because they see themselves as deserving of it.

For you, I think the importance is that you can suggest your site to the ODP for free, and the search engines, who happen to use our data, will list you for free, you won't have to pay them a fee for the privledge.

As far as ranking, you'd have to speak to them, we have nothing whatsoever to do with how they use our data, we just collect and organize it the way we see fit to.

The ODP is all about identifying good qualty sites with real content.
The SEO business is about as getting a top ranking irrespective of content but, most importantly, finding excuses as to why they failed (or why Google banned their client's site). Naturally the biggest scapegoat is DMOZ for not listing the site.
My opinion as an intelligent professional (with a tendency to occassionally bouts of idiocy), is that you try and work it out yourself. All we can really say here is that anyone who says that an ODP listing is essential does not know much about SEO.

regards

Well, i am not a professional; i am newbie editor from Bulgaria and i just want to tell you something about ODP, SEO and so on.
In Bulgarian language category there are only 2288 sites listed. By other side, we, editors, have something called "bookmarks" - place where we can prepare for edit and collect sites before listing in ODP. In my bookmarks there are more than 1300 collected and divided by categories sites.
What i am talking about is that LESS than 1% of the sites in my bookmarks and in World/Bulgaria are submitted by owners/SEO experts.

And this is not fatal for those ones, not listed in ODP. Bulgarian biggest site, with more than 250 000 unique visitors daily wasn't listed before one month. I can give you many examples of BG sites with PR7 - this is the biggest PR Google grants us - which are not listed. And their business is still working.

So if i can give you advice - concentrate on quality content and good services - this will help you more than one listing in ODP.

Good luck

I have a better chance of getting electircuted than being listed here.

I have added great contents to my site <url1 deleted> and have made the site easy to navigate for users and have been waiting for nearly a year and half to be listed. I guess owners should hire professionals to be listed on dmoz. cause my repeated trials to be listed here has been to no avail.
I understand that the good folks on dmoz are trying their best and there are many sites to be evaluated and listed but with the same token if you check <url2 deleted> that has no content in compare to mine, they have been listed here yet my site has gone unnoticed although i have many educational pages in my flooring 101 section.
I guess after 20 years in the same business i am better off doing print advertising than to beg to be listed.
But if it helps any, i am begging to be listed. pretty please with sugur on top. merry christmas.

owners should hire professionals to be listed on dmoz

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I hope you are joking. Don't waste your money.

has no content in compare to mine, they have been listed here yet my site has gone unnoticed

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I think many people in your stuation will try to compare sites that are listed to try to work out why on earth their site is not listed. The main reason is that no editor has yet reviewed it. This is especially true in commercial areas where the sheer volume of suggestions (many of them inappropriate and suggested by 'professionals') makes life difficult for the few editors brave enough to edit there.

my repeated trials to be listed here

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Multiple suggestions don't actually help you any as they usually overwrite each other. When they don't, an editor may feel that having spent 10 minutes deleting multiple suggestions of site x, leaving one for review, that site x has has enough time spent on it and leave the review for next time.

[Note you are allowed to suggest twice, once under topic and once under your locality if you have a bricks and mortar place of business that people would contact you at.]

regards

averyfloors said:

waiting for nearly a year and half to be listed.
...
<url2 deleted> that has no content in compare to mine, they have been listed here yet my site has gone unnoticed

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These are very frequently expressed concerns which are (not surprisingly) addressed in our FAQ section.
Perhaps reading the answers there will help you to understand what the ODP offers and how it works.