For the past few weeks, I have been working on the suggestions in the Website Grader report to improve search engine ranking. In the Off-Page SEO section of the report, besides the all-important inbound links number, there are two seemingly relevant items: being listed in dmoz and in the Yahoo! Directory.
I started with dmoz, as it was referred to as “the largest and most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web”, which sounded impressive to me. For some reason I found it hard to define the category for my blog; finally, I chose Business: Marketing and Advertising: Internet Marketing: Marketing Services as the best fit. Unfortunately, dmoz does not acknowledge a submission and they do not offer any alternate method to follow-up on it, hence the only thing to do is wait. But as of today, waiting has not worked and my blog has not been listed. I guess I could try again, as suggested in this interesting article on the subject.
As for the Yahoo! Directory, I shunned from it after I found out there is a substantial fee for their service ($299 is substantial to me). Instead, I opted for submitting my blog URL for free to Yahoo! Search.
Other actions I have taken after the suggestions in the report: I have added the Alexa traffic rank button to my blog (there is nothing to brag about my rank just yet) and submitted one article to Digg; I bookmarked on del.icio.us myself, maybe something I should not have done… I also added the Twitter Follow Me button to the side. The little blue bird looks good there, I think.
A rather puzzling statement from Website Grader is the one about “Too many images found”. There is not much to do except for ignoring it: the pictures I have are the gravatars of the top commentators and the image for the e-book cover in the opt-in form. They stay!
One thing that has botehred me a bit is that I could not get the Website Grader badge to show my updated grade after all the above actions (it got up to 82). Since I could not establish the root cause, I decided to remove it. Something similar happened with the Alexa rank button, but this one updates automatically now. I might give the badge a second chance…
There is always more that can be done but I think I have addressed the Website Grader report sufficiently. I should now go back to focus on getting links and continue commenting on other blogs.
Gosh! It took me too long to post again…
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Hi Jose,
Nice to see you stick to the very important theme of seo. I don’t feel like paying that much to be in Yahoo directory either.
DMOZ is good to be in but they are incredibly selective and picky so you may have to keep on applying there over and over for a long time unless you luck out.
Since they can take several weeks or even months to do the review it makes sense to apply only once every 6 months or so.
Only the big bloggers seem to have managed being listed there. Of course I wouldn’t know how to check on he small ones since they are a legion.
Another thing to keep in mind is that unless you have at least 20 posts on your blog they will not even consider you.
But if you manage to get listed in DMOZ it will be a big boost to how search engines view your blog.
The too many images found by the site grader is misleading since they consider gravatars and every tiny thing an image. You are right in not paying any attention to that.
Vance
Vance@Get Blog Traffic Increase´s last blog ..Get Blog Traffic Increase With Blog Comments
Hi Vance,
Thank you for your comments and suggestions about dmoz. I will pursue on getting listed there… as well as posting more, to improve my credentials.
The Alexa button started updating after a few days, just as you told me it would happen.
Jose
Hi Jose
I’ve been reading an article at Sitesell.com about the relationship between Yahoo! Directory DMOZ and Google.
The problem and maybe the advantage of DMOZ is that they are information focused and any kind of commercialization or monetization measure is treated with suspicion.
So, in order to be listed there you have to make sure you give great value in comparison to your monetization efforts.
The author of the article suggests having at least about 25 pages of valuable information free of any kind of commercialization means. Then the probability that the responsible for your application at Dmoz approves it increases. However, this is not guaranteed.
So you have to be patience. The only thing to do is to add more valuable content until you get 25 to 30 pages of great content and submit your site to Dmoz.
Hmmm .. I think this a good topic to write about in my own blog … of course I’ll link to yours
Btw – I experimented little bit with your KeywordLuv functionality (cool)
Keep going man
Estani Chapel
EstaniChapel@Search-Engine-Ranking´s last blog ..Is This The Birth Of Video Marketing 2.0?
Hi Estani, and thank you for stopping by!
Yes, I have also heard about dmoz liking sites to have 20 or more pages of content, and then the need to resubmit several times. I’ve even been told it might be virtually impossible to get listed… Sounds like a challenge, right?
With KeywordLuv you can specify the keyword you want to rank for; just consider that your log has to be DoFollow. You might want to consider the CommentLuv plugin also, so people you give comments to or those who read your comments can quickly see what you’re up to in your blog.
Cheers,
Jose
Hi Jose,
Thanks for bringing dmoz to my attention, I think I’ve heard of that directory before but didn’t pay much attention to it.
I will have to see if I can get listed, but looking through the sites that are listed under Internet Marketing, they only seem to be sites that are company names and not personal blogs like ours… We’ll have to see if they let us in I guess.
As for the Yahoo Directory, I would want to pay that big fee either, so I think I’ll leave that one out.
I wish you all the best for 2010, and hope it is a profitable year for you!
Paul
Paul Lear@increase alexa rank´s last blog ..2009, The Year It All Began…
Paul, I too wish you the best for 2010!
Just finding a suitable category in dmoz for blogs like ours can be tricky. But although difficult, getting listed there seems worth keep trying.
Jose
Hi Jose,
I see that your blog traffic is increasing with your efforts at seo and comments on other blogs.
Regarding DMOZ, I’ll also try to get listed there when I have more than 20 posts on my blog.
I’m prepared to keep on applying until they give in.
BTW I’ve noticed on your blog and mine and others that I visited today that the top commentators stopped showing.
It has to do with the year change. When I first noticed it on my blog I thought that the plug in was not functioning properly.
I played with it and realized that I had it set to reset yearly.
The plug in only seems to care about the year number and not when you first installed it.
I changed the setting so that the commentators stay. It’s the last option given.
I wish you a Happy New Year and Very Prosperous 2010.
Vance
Vance@Blog Traffic Increase´s last blog ..Get Blog Traffic Increase With Blog Comments
Hi Vance,
Thank you for the heads-up on Top Commentators! I made the adjustments in the widget settings and now I have my list back. I noticed one can also specify the number of days one wants the widget to count from to keep the list updated; that would also sort out the year change issue, I think.
One more thing I noticed was that your count of comments was not increasing from 8 –and you’ve been here more than that. After increasing the number of commentators to show, you appeared four more times. However, these four were all individual entries, each based on the keywords you specified in the Name field, because of our use of KeywordLuv.
Scrolling down the items in the widget, I changed the (Hijack-proof?) Group commentors based on criterion to ‘E-mail’ from ‘User names’, and now your comments count is at 12. With this trade-off, however, the count of my good friend Paul Lear@increase alexa rank is now split, since he has used different email addresses when commenting. I wonder if there is a way to sort this one out…
May God bless you in 2010,
Jose
Hi Jose,
Thanks for the tip with the adjustment to e-mail.
I’ll try to adjust it on my blog too since your comments are not all counted as one item either.
And other peoples’ as well due to their using the the keyword luv advantage.
Maybe you can ask Paul to use only one e-mail address when commenting on our blogs.
Vance
Vance@Get Blog Traffic ´s last blog ..Get Blog Traffic Increase With Blog Comments
There is no doubt that DMOZ and Yahoo Directory are authoritative directories, but these are either difficult or costly to get listed in. There are some other top shelf premium internet directories available that still carry authority for a much lower price.
Hey, William, thank you for stopping by!
And also thank you for your suggestion, I’ll take a look at your alternative.