How to Get a Top Position in an Up & Coming Major Search Engine

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by Jeff Davidson

If you are not already listed in The Open Directory, www.dmoz.org, drop everything and submit your site now!

Open directory is hand compiled by human editors just like Yahoo. But being fairly new, it is much easier to get your site listed. (Imagine if you had got into Yahoo when they first started!)

Why is it essential to be listed in the Open Directory?

It recently merged with Netscape and is going to be the main search engine for Netscape's Netcenter. Plus, several major search engines, including Lycos and Hotbot are incorporating Open Directory listings into their search results and are displaying them, ahead of listings from their own database. (Because they are hand checked and approved by editors, they are considered more relevant than their own listings, many of which have come from automated submission software.)

This means you immediately jump ahead of the top 10 sites in these search engines.

Undoubtedly, other major search engines will follow suit in the future (AOL to be next?).

HOW TO CHECK IF YOU ARE ALREADY LISTED

1. To check, do a search using a part of your URL that would be unique to your site.

For example, if you have your own domain, do a search for your domain name.

E.g. www.widgets.com.

If you have a sub-domain. E.g. www.widgets.abc.com or www.freesite.com/~widgets, search for widgets.abc or ~widgets.

In other words, just use enough of your URL to be unique to you so you don't bring up 1,000,000 other widget sites!

2. If your site is not listed, do a search using your most important keyword/s or phrase to find out the most appropriate category & sub-category to submit to.

Click on the best sub-category to view the listings already there. Then click on "Add URL" at the top of that page.

HOW TO GET A TOP POSITION

If you check around the sites that give search engine advice, little is revealed about how Open Directory works.

Through extensive trial and error testing, I can now give you these tips for a top position:

1. Make sure your site is ready and looks good because you have to get approved by a human editor, who is most likely one of your competitors!

2. Select the most appropriate category.

3. Include your most important keyword/s or phrase in your page title. If used as a directory, where the user drills down through the categories and sub-categories, you will find that your listing is more or less alphabetical, based on what your title says.

In my opinion, it does not matter where you rank alphabetical. Because most people will be performing keyword searches, so it is more important to be amongst the first displayed on a  keyword search. This is why you want your important keywords in your title.

4. Include your most important keyword/s or phrase in your page description.

5. Ideally, also have your most important keyword/s as part of your URL E.g. if my keyword was widgets, I could work it in like this: www.abc.com/widgets.html

6. Do not submit doorway pages, remember you have to get approved by a human editor.

6. Multiple listings are not encouraged, but if your site deals with more than one subject, you can submit one page for each separate subject - just select the most relevant category/sub-category for each topic.

7. Check in 48 hours to see if you are listed. If you're not there, wait 10-14 days and resubmit. If you're still not successful, wait a month and then submit again. It took me 2 or 3 attempts to get one of my topics listed - but persistence (with out becoming a nuisance) paid off!

If you think this advice is similar to how to get a good ranking in Yahoo - you are right. Because of their similar nature, listing and search procedures are almost identical.

Have fun and enjoy!

Jeff Davidson is webmaster at Pacesetter Services, specializing in free to join associate/referral programs to value and interest to your site and earn you extra revenue from worthwhile products and services. Invest 10 minutes now at: www.users.bigpond.com/pacetrav/webmaster.htm