Having your site listed on Yahoo! and the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) is one of the best ways to gain high quality backlinks. Being listed on these top directories also influences your placement in other search engines and directories.

Yahoo! charges $299 annually for a listing in their directory. They do however guarantee that your site will be reviewed within 7 business days.

The Open Directory Project (DMOZ) can also take months and repeated submissions before you’re indexed. If your site has been accepted into the Open Directory, it may take anywhere from two weeks to several months for your site to be listed on partner sites which use the Open Directory data, such as AOL Search, Google, Netscape Search, Yahoo Search, and hundreds of other sites. Open Directory is definitely worth your effort.

On rare occasions, these directories will allow you to slip some keywords into the title, but do so at your own risk. This practice could raise a red flag for your submission and subject it to additional scrutiny.

The website description you include with your submission has a big impact upon how your site will rank once it’s listed in the directory. It is very important to get it right the first time. If you include too much promotional jargon in your description or make it too long, the human editors are sure to change it. If they do, it’s highly unlikely that your keywords won’t appear in the final listing. Be concise, be sensible, and, most of all, include your most important keywords wherever you can without appearing to be keyword loading.

Start with your meta description tag for your site. Copy and paste it into the submission form, then start deleting extraneous words. Reposition words until you have the shortest yet most descriptive sentence possible. If you do this correctly, chances are the editors won’t alter it. They’ll appreciate the fact that you saved them the time of editing the description.

The words you’re using in your description must appear on the pages of your site. If they don’t, and the site appears to be about subjects other than what you described in your form, your description might be edited. It’s almost impossible to change a site description once it’s listed in most Internet directories. Get it absolutely right the first time.

One shortcut to getting into DMOZ is to volunteer as an editor in the category you wish to appear. The time investment in most cases is well worth the return of having exactly the listing you want approved with just one submission.

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