Forum Moderators: open
i keep seeing site this and site that where everyone seems to be talking about getting their entire site listed... what confuses me is that many of the "sites" that i see in those areas that i peek into are simply pages... not an entire site... maybe even just groupings of pages out of many more on the site...
my /site/ covers several areas of personal interest... each in seperate directories... sure, i could create subdomains for those areas of interest but i haven't... subdomains would be "targetted" sites, i suppose...
so, my question is do i try to get the /site/ listed in some of the categories or do i break out the listings and submit sections of the site to the catagories they fit in?
ie:
mysite/bbs/ -> computers:bbs
mysite/hobby_network/ -> computers:bbs:hobbynetwork
mysite/satellite_tracking/ -> science:astronomy:amateur:satellites
mysite/telescope_making/ -> science:astronomy:amateur:atm
do i try to get the /site/ listed in some of the categories or do i break out the listings and submit sections of the site to the catagories they fit in?YES!
ODP calls multiple listings for the same site "deep linking" and they have a fairly detailed policy page describing why it's done and when it's appropriate. It will probably aid you in answering your own question. I can't find the darn page though! I can't currently connect...
domain.com/sport/ to sport section
domain.com/football/ to football section
domain.com/basketball/ to basketball section
but also is there a list of directories that will actually allow this?
The official ODP deeplinking guidelines are here: [dmoz.org...]
Connection's been flaky, so I'll quote it for you:
"General Rule: In the vast majority of categories and branches, deeplinking is the exception rather than the rule. Deeplinks should offer content that is unique and extremely useful to a particular category. There are no strict rules regarding the type of site that should or should not be deeplinked. Providing deeplinks, in a uniform way, to sites that offer extremely useful and unique content can add value to the directory in a few cases (e.g. categories with very limited content, and where the meat of the available web content is typically buried within larger sites). However, editors should be very judicious when adding deeplinks of a particular URL. If you are uncertain about adding deeplinks, ask an experienced editor, such as a meta or an editall, for advice or guidance. Ultimately, all deeplinking decisions are subject to staff approval."
Please DON'T submit every single page of your site to the ODP. As you can see from the paragraph above, a deeplink has to have exceptional content to qualify for its own listing. In 99.9% of all cases there will be absolutely no reason for your sport.htm, football.htm, and basketball.htm pages to have separate listings with us; the main page will get one listing in Sports. The example from the very first post will in all likelihood get one listing in Personal Pages.
Submitting all your subpages will only waste a lot of everyone's time. Whether people should submit subpages at all is open to debate... however, unless a subpage is very content-rich (say, has more good content than most of the other sites in the category, and none of it is copied from someplace else), you *definitely* shouldn't submit it. Content-light deeplinks don't get listed separately with us.
---------------
Disclaimer: This post constitutes an unofficial, personal opinion not necessarily shared by other ODP editors, the university, or my cats.