Forum Moderators: open
Scenario:
Nice little B&M widget shop.
Sells locally through the B&M store.
Establishes website to reach American/European market. Trades in US$
Not interested in local region e-commerce (the locals can't afford us :) )
I submitted to ODP a few months ago and was pleased to be indexed fairly rapidly. Not entirely pleased to be put in a regional category, but thought 'oh well.. really more interested in spin-offs from other search engines rather than hits from ODP themselves'.
Actually I didn't realise you could get a regional AND a topical listing.
Question: Is it worth contacting an editor to ask for a topical listing? I wonder how many searches might be done through ODP where we show up, but people bypass us on the assumption that we really are regional.
Question2: If I did contact them, should I contact the editor of the category I'm in, or the editor of the category I want to be in?
The general rule is that both a regional and a topical listing are allowed. I would definitely submit to the topical. But it’s not for the traffic from dmoz.org. There are very few searches at ODP besides editors.
Submit to the topical cat. Just use the standard submit for that cat. Read the guidelines & FAQ for the cat, if there are any. Maybe copy or semi-copy the listing you got in the regional. Unless you submit a hyped or bad listing, you should get into the topical. That being said, all editors are different. And there’s no telling how much of a backlog there is in the topical cat.
Good luck,
rmjvol
Also make sure that you have some content that is BEYOND what you sell.
For example:
You may sell 'widgets', but MAKE a nice page on "how widgets are made" or "why people like widgets". It is a nice entry into the topical category.
Make sure you refer to the above in your description. Keep it non-subjective. Any subjective terms would usually be replaced.
Also:
Always refer to what's actually on the website. A description that just says, "We make widgets" will be replaced by "A widget-maker. Featuring the making of widgets and the reasons why people like widgets."
(Notice- all 3rd person! Objective description!)
My first description got in unedited - probably because it was completely flat and dry *l*, but hey, I've been reaping the benefits since.
Thanks for the reminder about non-product info ScottM - I have recently added a couple of pages of exactly that to the site, but probably wouldn't have thought to include them in the description. Definitely will though, because they're strong pages with some good keywords.
:)
If you're targeting a topical branch, then what has already been said about informative content can't be stressed enough. The information "we sell widgets" is not sufficient for a listing in /Science/Technology/Widgets. But if you have a bunch of pages that offer helpful and non-product specific information about widgets in and of itself, then the widget editor will probably be happy to accept you submission.
You can make the decision easier for the editor by seperating the informative content into a clearly identifiable and self contained subsection of the site and submit that instead of the main index, so that the commercial part of the rest of the site doesn't dilute the informational value of the submission. The informational subsection will then be reviewed as if it was an individual site, and accepted or rejected based on the content that can be found there. Remember that the editors don't care whether the listing will help your site. All they are interested in is whether your (sub)site will add useful and unique information to the respective category.
