advice for listing in dmoz

I am about to submit my site to dmoz. Does anyone have any
advice to submmitting a website.

<snip>

Spend time deciding the best category, submitting to the wrong category results in delays while the site is shuffled around.

Look at the guidelines for writing titles and descriptions. If properly done, they will stand out from the rest of the mis-spelled, spam filled, badly capitalized mess that are mostly sent in - that might catch an editors attention, and get it reviewed ahead of the rest.

Make sure the site works, and nothing is under construction, or coming soon.

Thanks for the good advice. I will follow the advice you gave me
and hopefully my site will get listed soon.

<snip>

I am depressed from this open project...
50,000 editors and all................

Why dont you become an editor and help out the cause?

Here is something I wrote a while back:

You will probably hear over and over when asking about directories - Submit to DMOZ.

What most people due is jump right over, skip to a category that seems good, and submit. Usually taking about 5 minutes in the process just like every submission. Right or Wrong - DMOZ isn't just any other submission.

If you are planning to submit to DMOZ, you should budget a bit of time as it will pay off in a better chance for acceptance and a quicker review. I am going to attempt to bring up some of the guidelines you should be aware of when submitting and a whole lot of myths that are passed around on many forums.

What you should do:

Take a long time to choose a category - This is very important. Most people just choose the first one they see and if it is only kind of related to your site, you have basically just placed your site in limbo. If a good editor sees it, they may move it to the appropriate category but be proactive and do it right. Spend some time looking at others that are already listed and compare your site to theirs to get an idea.

Only Submit Once! - DMOZ does not send out any mails to give you status and it may be up to a year until you are accepted. If you submit in January then resubmit in March - Your January submission is deleted automatically and you just increased your time to wait. If you continually submit you will most likely be banned.

Write a descriptive description - Do not sell - Your description of your site should be what a third party would wrote about you if they did not know you. The Best Widget Site in the World - is not an appropriate description and will not get you listed. Again, browse others to see how they write...Be clear and concise.

Add original content - DMOZ is not your normal directory that will list a hundred sites that are nearly identical. Add resources and articles to your site and make it Original! Affiliate sites don't stand a chance so be sure you have something to offer before submitting

Some Myths about DMOZ:

1.) You have no way of knowing if they got your submission - FALSE - They have set up a forum as a way of letting you know and this is a much under posted and under used area of DMOZ - The address is http://www.resource-zone.com/forum/

2.) You can only submit once - FALSE - OK this this is a bit misleading...You can actually submit to a "normal" category and a "regional" one if it fits. You must be physically located somewhere to be able to also submit to regional and read their guidelines as certain sites like real estate are the exception.

3.) No one uses DMOZ anyway so who cares - FALSE - It is true that few people really uses the directory at DMOZ.com however many directories use their results to fill in their own. So someone may be at a specialist directory like for "Animals" and they have used some of the DMOZ categories to fill them out. Also regional directories use their results also so you need to look at the big picture.

Just for interest the number of editor (65,623 editors) is an accumulative total of all editors that have ever received permissions to edit - and not a current total of 'active' editors.

In fact as of Sun 03 Oct 2004 there was 8,816 active editors.

Active is defined as: 'accessed their editing account once in the past 12 months'.

Assuming that the bulk of editors are not top level editors (e.g. having privileges in 10's of thousands of categories and there are close to 600K categories means 'what'?

YOU WAIT!

I am waiting for something else. I am building a large content rich site with a friend. Lots of unique historic photos and info. We have about 200 up so far... but are not submitting because we don't have enough to knock their socks off. We could have submitted with only 50 photos but they might not have approved. But when we have about 500... that will be the time to submit. We will get in for sure.
I think that lots of people are too anxious and submit with a scrappy site then complain because they were not included.

i agree...a lot of people submit a lot of sites to try to get good PR backlink...especially forums, i have heard not to submit forums with less than 5000 posts and decent daily activity.

Me personal [not offical ODP rules or guidelines] feeling, is that it's going to depend on the category. A category that has few sites/forums might be more open to allowing forums with less content.

But with a category that has forums with content - you are competing against them.