The Web's Secret Traffic Source - the Open Directory ProjectWritten by Alan Grissett
The importance of having targeted traffic can't be understated, and search engines can be a great source of this traffic. The first search service covered in this series of articles is a directory known as Open Directory Project, or ODP (http://www.dmoz.com/).First, a little background on Open Directory Project: The ODP is a Web directory, not a search engine, and purpose of ODP is to list and categorize web sites. But unlike Yahoo! or several dozen other directories that maintain a paid staff of reviewers, "the ODP is an Open Source inspired, volunteer managed initiative." In a nutshell, this means that human volunteers review, add, and remove listings of this directory. Potential editors can elect to review site submissions in categories related to their area of expertise or interest. In and of itself, this is a pretty remarkable method for reviewing sites, because it allows for those most knowledgeable in a given area to review sites submitted to that same area. From a Web site manager's perspective though, Open Source nature of search service itself is main factor in its importance as a traffic source.
| | How to Submit to the Open Directory Project (ODP)Written by Alan Grissett
The ODP (http://www.dmoz.org/) is organized into categories and subcategories, and as simple as it may sound, key to submitting is finding out where your site should be listed. There are two good ways to determine where your site belongs. You can perform a keyword search, then "drill down" to find category that sites returned by search belong to, or you can manually find right category by drilling down from home page. I would recommend manually finding right category, because some sites returned as search results may not belong to exactly same category your site should be submitted to.For sake of illustration, let's say you run a for-profit, defensive driving school, and I need to find correct category to submit to. From ODP home page, I would probably select broad category of "Business", because after all, I am out to make a profit, so that seems like a pretty logical choice. The next page I'm presented with has around fifty subcategories. "Training and Schools" sounds right, so I'll choose that one. I'm then provided with various categories of training schools, and "Traffic Schools" is among them, so I'll choose it. This is probably category where I need my site to be listed, so I'll submit here. The category selection process just described would apply to any site, and the
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