If you can guess what the following terms all have in common, I’ll give you $25 via Paypal, no questions asked. Just leave your comment at the end of this post. This is not open to current employees of SEO.com. Here they go:
SEO, Jobs, Careers, Linkbuilding (I’ll tell you the answer in my next blog post, which will be a humdinger)
My post is actually about DMOZ, and the things I wished that they did differently.
First of all, I wish DMOZ was a paid listing site. Why? For the mere fact that if they required payment, then in return, they would be required to at least have a little bit of customer service. I would either get a ‘Yes, your site is accepted’ or a ‘No, your site sucks and sells Viagra’. Right now, you get nothing from these guys in terms of a response.
Secondly, I wish DMOZ wasn’t so hyped up by everyone and their dog. Yes, DMOZ would be the bees knees and the cat’s meow in anyone’s review of free directories. But as a source of authority and link value, there are hundreds of other free sites that provide the same, or more, authority and link value. Also, Google really shouldn’t use your DMOZ listing title as the title of your site in search results pages. That’s just plain wrong.
Thirdly, if DMOZ stays in their ‘free directory’ model, then they should really either accept more editors, or kick their current editors in the face. I mean honestly, I don’t know how many legitimate sites I’ve submitted to DMOZ, only to sit and twiddle my thumbs and 6 months later, still no listing. I don’t know what the review process is for sites to be accepted, but I’ve got to imagine they get tons of submissions every day, and the editors have to really stay on top of those sites. I currently run a few directories that get multiple submissions every day, and it takes about 5 seconds to tell if a site is relevant to the category it was submitted to, and if it’s spammy or not.
Fourthly, I wish DMOZ would come out with the definitive guide to getting listed in their directory. Specific things such as ‘When submitting, record yourself licking your nose while singing the National anthem, and upload to Youtube, then you’re guaranteed to get in (oh, and no Viagra)’. It would probably save the editors time if they just wrote down all the guidelines, and then went through the checklist, and deleted all the sites that didn’t meet the criteria. For you Naysayers claiming, ‘The current guidelines of DMOZ are fine’. Well I disagree. If they’re just fine, then why don’t all my sites get accepted? They all meet the current criteria.
Fifthly, if you’re actually looking for SEO, Jobs, Careers, or Linkbuilding, just click on the respective links I just used.
Lastly, if you would like to join in the effort to help DMOZ become better, you can send me an email at dmoz-could-get-better@seo.com, and I won’t respond to you, or even let you know that you matter at all, because I’m an editor at SEO.com, the greatest site in the world.
Honestly, if this blog post does happen to elicit a response from anyone at DMOZ, then I think the world would be a better place. We’ll see what happens. And I will continue to submit my clients’ sites to DMOZ because hey, why not?