April 1, 2010
As you know, various SEO methods are used to optimise and promote a site to top search engine positions.
Site registration in catalogues is a fairly common promotion method. There are many catalogues online, and you need to wisely choose those suitable for your project. However, there are two internet catalogues whose registration should be one of any webmaster’s main tasks: the Open Directory (Open Directory Project / ODP, or simply DMOZ) and Yandex.Catalog. We’ll talk about them below.
DMOZ Open Directory
Today DMOZ/ODP is arguably the most respected site catalogue on the internet. DMOZ belongs to American company AOL and is a free link catalogue. DMOZ registration is free. To get a site or project added to the Open Directory, the project employs many editors who manually verify each link against the submission. The DMOZ catalogue interface is available in many languages, including Russian.
Today the public portion of DMOZ contains over 5 million sites. The catalogue also has nearly a hundred language sections — the Russian section ranks 9th. Over the catalogue’s lifetime, more than 80,000 people have done editing work.
But webmasters care less about numbers and more about effectiveness and benefits of DMOZ registration. The benefits include:
— inclusion in DMOZ signals website authority, since not all sites pass careful review;
— a link from the Open Directory boosts the site’s TrustRank — the level of trust search engines (especially Yandex and Google) place in the site;
— DMOZ’s PR is 8, тИЦ 2200, which positively influences the growth of corresponding site metrics;
— DMOZ’s databases are used by many other influential internet resources — Google, Netscape, AOL — meaning links to your site appear on those portals too. Particularly important: Google’s own catalogue is based on ODP, so you can only enter the Google catalogue via DMOZ;
— financial benefit for the owner — link prices from the resource increase.
DMOZ has many more advantages besides. But while Open Directory registration is free, to be accepted you must meet certain criteria and pass review.
First, the site must have quality content — i.e., unique content and ideally a unique design. Second, particular attention should be paid to a correct site title and description — DMOZ has specific requirements for them. Carefully choose the section and category where the site will be listed, since there are many categories and you can’t register in several at once.
Don’t try to get into the catalogue if the site exists for commercial profit, isn’t fully developed, isn’t updated, duplicates another resource, or contains broken links.
If you meet all requirements, the site can comfortably get into the DMOZ catalogue.
Yandex.Catalog
In RuNet, the most authoritative catalogue is Yandex.Catalog. While not yet at DMOZ’s scale, Yandex’s catalogue is no less popular.
Yandex.Catalog contains sites organised by region and topic. It currently contains around 100,000 websites. Like the Open Directory, the Yandex catalogue has editors. The distinguishing feature of Yandex.Catalog is that it’s also a ranking — the resource’s position in a section is determined by тИЦ metrics.
You can register in Yandex.Catalog either free or paid via a registration form. Naturally, paying lets you expect faster processing of your application, but in any case the web resource must meet certain requirements.
The main ones: the site must not violate the law in any way, must be quality (in content and design), description and titles must meet the catalogue editors’ requirements; the site must not contain search spam elements, broken links, or duplicate another web resource.
Getting into Yandex.Catalog gives the resource all the same benefits as DMOZ, but mainly within RuNet. This includes increased site visits, recognition of authority in RuNet. Sites from Yandex.Catalog rank higher in Yandex search. Additionally, a correct catalogue description using keywords also boosts the site’s Yandex rank. Yandex.Catalog has PR 7 and тИЦ 2600, so the link “weight” from the catalogue is also high. And of course, sites from Yandex.Catalog bring owners significant financial benefit.
