dmoz SEO?

I don't know if this is allowed, if not please delete this thread.

If so, is there a section where we can learn to optimize our sites for dmoz?

I ask because I have my site listed, but for every one of my keywords, not only does my site not show up, but no website at all show up So, if my site is targeted to that search phrase I don't understand why it doesn't even come up.

To this end, I want to optimize my site to get better results.. I don't know how directories work so is this even possible?

Assuming this doesn't get deleted, thanks

When your site is listed in DMOZ, as soon as DMOZ search is updated (which can sometimes lag a few weeks behind the listing) the listing is searchable on three things:

1. The site's title as lited in the ODP
2. The URL - for some reason it is not always searchable with the www. part, so www.widgets.com would be searchable on widgets.com or widgets
3. The description in the directory.

The text on the site itself is not indexed in the ODP.

Hope that made it a little clearer

oh...
So then if my site's title is my url, does that make my site pretty much invisible?

Thanks for the help, I didn't know this before you told me...

Why should that be?

Umm, the ODP is, as you rightly notice, a directory; ergo, it is not a search engine.

The ODP categorises websites in a heirarchical tree structure. The search facility is there to help you locate the correct category, not really for returning a list of websites.

That is, a person looking for information should enter a few keywords, and then browse each of the categories that are returned for the search. As long as your site is in the category once reached, then the ODP has done all that it set out to do.

The search results accidentally also return a few sites in the list, but there is no apparent ordering to those results. Don't worry about it.

Since the ODP is a human-edited directory, the only way to really "optimize" a site is by giving it good, unique content. The better the content, the better the chances of getting listed.

There is no science to it, no tricks that you can get to make life easy.

As others have said - the search function in the ODP is only really there as a convenience - it's not really intended to be a "Search Engine" in the same class as Google or the others.

Hope this helps.

NO. Whatever you were thinking of doing is either criminal or counterproductive, and most likely both.

sorry, I don't understand what you are asking me?

In my submission I gave my websites title for the title, in place my url was used. Then again even after having read the odp guideline I still did not understand what was meant by title. It says sites title, then it says if you can't find it check the source code.. am I right about that?

So, that just led me to believe title == <title>.

Did I mess up?

So, that just led me to believe title == <title>.

Click to expand...

Generally, yes.

However, if the <title> is keyword stuffed it will get changed. If it's not a title but a marketing slogan, it'll get changed. In areas like http://dmoz.org/Business/ the title will be completely ignored and the name of the company/entity will be used. (This is the case in other areas of the directory as well.)

I can't speak to the specific case of your site (whatever it is).