If you are internet savvy and involved in the world of SEO then you will have more often than not heard about DMOZ before. DMOZ was created in January of 1999 as an Open Directory, a place where a selection of good quality websites could be stored to be used as reference.

A unique point of DMOZ was that the directory was human edited which means no spamming websites or cheating the “system” for financial gain. DMOZ became so popular that major search engines, including some big names (like AOL) use to – and still do use the websites stored as reference for their search results.


Personally I have been creating websites for around 10 years but made the mistake of not perusing them as they would probably be worth a lot of money these days. Back then things were a lot simpler, with html coding being the primary source of website design. Anyway, back on subject – getting listed on DMOZ use to be a pleasant experience which took no more than 2 minutes of your time and you could expect to see your website listed within a few months (yes even back then it still took a while).

Back then as soon as I was listed in DMOZ I saw a massive increase in traffic results, not just random traffic but targeted, and I had a sales increase of at least $3000 per month, from my then bedroom. I had a huge increase from Google and many smaller search engines that used DMOZ.

So where did it all go wrong? DMOZ in itself has become something it probably set out to get away from - it’s a website that is now controlled by the human editors that abuse their own positions for financial gain thus allowing non important websites the chance of a possible boost. I’m not saying every editor is taking a bit of extra cash for the job but it is near enough impossible to get listed on the directory. I have personally submitted around 5 or 6 different websites, following all the guidelines, that was around 2 years ago and still nothing. I even contacted an editor and asked what the deal was. He told me that my websites were either not visible or there are no editors in my selected categories.

Well obviously times change and so do seo methods of getting more traffic. So over the past few years I’ve been looking at how important being listed in DMOZ is. On my journey for answers I realised that it is not as half as important as it once was, Google’s algorithm now looks at many different factors such as links, content and updates (plus 101 different variables). If you get listed in DMOZ you won’t see the dramatic increase in SERP positions you may have once though you would get. There are plenty of other good quality directories out there that provide good links for a small price.

You can see in the image below that DMOZ are taking a hit in 2007 as more and more people are just fed up with the level of service they provide.

Conclusion – don’t waste your time with DMOZ and definitely don’t pay an editor for inclusion, this will only lead to disappointment. By all means submit your website but don’t sit there waiting for your website to get listed. Is there still time to save DMOZ – doubtful.

Just goes to show how respected websites like Facebook, Digg and StubleUpon have become. To my surprise, a colleague pointed out to me that the esteemed BBC website is now displaying social book marking icons for each article that is published.

The BBC website is like an SEO goldmine if you will, there’s fresh content (hourly), and you have RSS feeds, podcasts, videos and now social book marking.

Keep an eye out for what they do next people!

As some people do still consider seo a method of witchcraft here’s a small but effective tip for you and before you all start thinking “I know this, it’s obvious!” I still see this being missed throughout particular “seo companies” clients.

Anchor Text

Anchor text is a term you will hear a lot in the world of seo. Anchor text is the text used when creating a text internally or externally from your website. For example, if you have a 2 page website about cars (it’s an example, humour me) then the actual text you use to link each page together is called “Anchor text”.


So on your website you have a link labeled - “Click here to visit page 2” – this is your link and the actual words used count as your anchor text. The page you are linking to has lots of content about cars but because your anchor text has no mention of cars you are not utilising anchor text fully.

What some people don’t realise is that using good anchor text inside your website helps with your overall seo “score” of your website. It’s easier to navigate therefore easier for the Google bot to visit your websites pages. So ideally if you are linking to a page about cars have “Quality car repairs and car information” – this is making that particular page more relevant than “Click here to visit page 2” which will do absolutely nothing for your seo work.

This practice should always be used for internal links and external links and also with images. It’s these phrases an keywords that should match with the content of your website and that’s what Google picks up on!

Hey, your account is temporarily unavailable due to site maintenance. It should be available again within a few hours. We apologize for the inconvenience.

That’s the message that I’m becoming all too familiar with every time I try to log on to Facebook. Earlier this week I was unable to logon to Facebook for almost an entire day, what’s the problem with this I hear you asking – will my life end if I don’t see what “mood” my friends are in or perhaps a long lost brother will “request” to be my friend. Well obviously not, but this isn’t the point, this happens at least once a day for me now.

I read from the “London AM” paper that Facebook had discovered a bug whereby users could now access “private” pages from other members. Well I have to say it – but who cares! The information on Facebook is hardly going to start WWIII - they are just photos and if Facebook can’t fix such a small problem in one big hit they need to start employing people who can work fast.


Believe it or not there is money to be made through Facebook and social media websites. You could obviously pay an extortionate amount of money to have your “flyer” displayed a few thousand times but initial feedback from advertisers says that the return rate was very low.

How do you generate free advertising on Facebook?

A simple way to generate interest in your product or service would be to create your very own group or start discussions in related groups. This rapport gains the trust of potential customers which obviously allows you to earn some potential cash. Don’t forget you have the option to include a link to your site from these groups. The link itself will do nothing in terms of SE rankings but you will generate traffic from it. I would say seounique.com receives around 10-20 unique visitors per month from that free link. It may not seem enough but if you gain just one order it’s completely worth it.

Whatever Facebook is doing they are loosing the trust of its users. There are too many applications, pages are too busy and Facebook has more downtime than up, sort it out Mr. David Nicholson.

SocialStream is a project created by the Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute, and funded by, wait for it…Google! The main goal of SocialStream is to unify all social media sites to one area. This would include features such as being able to update of all of your networks activity (i.e. friend request, personal messages etc)

What will this mean to existing social media websites?

Well social stream is still in development but is still on the horizon. My personal belief is that you join a particular social media site because you like that particular web layout or navigation or special feature that no-one else has. I suppose if SocialStream can manage to create a good, easy to use functioning website then they might be on to a winner.

What will this mean to Facebook and Myspace?

As Google is funding this operation to help reach western users we can expect big things, however Facebook and Myspace are like your hometowns. You get settled, know the area and have all your friends nearby so implementing a system like this might not work to Google’s advantage. The thought of having to integrate all of your social media sites sounds, in theory, well hard! Unless they can perfect an easy to use system that does it all for you I can’t see SocialStream kicking off.

Whatever the result you can bet Google will make sure SocialStream won’t be a complete failure. Watch this space.