How I became a dmoz.org editor and got a site listed

Becoming an editor of the Open Directory at dmoz.org

I was recently accepted as an editor of the ODP (Open Directory Project) at dmoz.org. Given the significance of the directory, its historical connection with Google, and its prominence in SEO discussion, I want to share my experience to help others understand the project better. I don't speak for the ODP. This is very much a personal article about my own experiences.

First, I must warn that if you're looking for a way to trick the ODP into admitting you as an editor in order for you to disadvantage competitors, or to list spammy websites, then you're wasting your time. The editor of a given category does not have the final say over what is listed there, or the manner in which each site is listed. There are strict rules and the editing history of the directory is scrutinised by a huge network of editors whose powers increase up the hierarchy. They are a very active and very experienced body of people and they do not tolerate abuse. The directory is under constant, human review. That's what makes it so special.

If you take anything away from reading about my experience then it should be these points:

• If you have expertise in a particular niche and are prepared to help the ODP establish a definitive, high quality category in that niche then there might just be a place for you as an editor.

• If you have a good site in that niche then you may even be able to get it listed very quickly - by approving it yourself as an editor of the category.

• If your only interest in dmoz.org is to get sites listed for you or your clients, or to try to disadvantage your competitors, then you will fail because other editors will undo your work. Don't waste your time.

Having been in digital marketing for many years, for me becoming a small part of dmoz was like being admitted into the mysterious inner sanctum of the internet. I had never tried applying before - I thought there was no point: surely they wouldn't accept me, because I'm a digital marketer with possible vested interests. (Even if they did accept me they surely wouldn't let me submit a site I had any affiliation with. Wouldn't that be some sort of conflict of interest?)

But over time my attitude towards dmoz was transformed and I think it was that transformation that helped me succeed in becoming an editor. Having spent a lot of time exploring certain categories in the Open Directory, it became clear to me that it was by no means definitive. Dmoz.org was not perfect. Some of the sites in the categories I'm interested in no longer existed on the internet. At the same time, some of the latest, most relevant and useful sites weren't yet included.

Something was missing. The ODP needed help. They needed somebody who knew what made a good website in those categories. They needed somebody who cared about the quality of websites about those subjects. They needed me!

I applied to become a category editor, disclosing my affiliation to a website in that category. Within a few days I was accepted as an editor and the site I disclosed and submitted was there waiting for me to list it in the directory. I call that a good user experience provided by dmoz.org - but particularly so when compared to the experience of people with more selfish motives, whose subconscious line of thought probably goes something like this:

I want this site listed. I haven't bothered to try to make it useful for people - in fact it's just a mirror site stuffed with ads. But here's the site - along with a spammy, keyword-stuffed title and description. I haven't bothered to look at what makes a good listing either. Just list it.

"Become an Editor"? Why would I do that - except to get this site listed? I don't care what's in the directory - just list this site now. If it's not listed by tomorrow I'll probably try submitting it another few times.

This is hardly quid pro quo. There's no give and take in that approach and so it's less likely to benefit anybody.


Getting your site listed on dmoz.org

Most people have a topic they're passionate about and that they have some expertise in. Whatever yours is, you're no doubt eminently familiar with the best websites on your subject. In fact you probably operate or are affiliated with at least one of those sites in some way. As an enthusiast, like me you care about the information and resources that are available to other enthusiasts. You would not recommend a bad, spammy website about your passionate interests to another enthusiast. So hopefully you wouldn't want to try to use the ODP to unfairly favour a pointless site in search results - right?

Blogs and forums are awash with complaints about how long it takes to get a site listed on dmoz. But the reason it sometimes takes so long to get a site listed may be largely due to volume. There are a huge queue of worthwhile sites waiting to get listed. The queue of poor sites submitted by spammers is at least as large. Somebody has to go through all those sites. That's a big job and the ODP needs help from people who can recognise a good site in the context of its niche.

At the bottom of most categories there is a link that says, "Become an editor". That's because the ODP needs more editors. If you have an area of expertise and an interest in building a really good directory then that could mean you.


Which category should you edit?

The most important consideration is which category you have the most expertise in. But you won't get accepted as an editor of a huge, high level category right away. First you need to prove your expertise and good intent by editing some of the smallest categories in the directory. So rather than editing Regional : UK you should be looking to start with something like Regional: Europe: United Kingdom: England: Hertfordshire: Arts and Entertainment.

Dmoz editors are actively looking for good websites about their subject category. I've seen several websites get listed on dmoz without anybody even submitting them. The editor knew their category and found the site themselves.

So the first and most important thing you can do to get your site into dmoz.org - and keep it there - is to aim to build one of the best websites in your niche, with unique content and resources that are of value to people interested in the topic. (Follow that up by promoting it in all the usual ways).

If the "build quality content" approach sounds familiar perhaps that's because the pursuit of quality, relevant, original content is also the only sustainable approach to search engine optimisation and other digital marketing campaigns. The bottom line is that quality content makes it easier for you to get links - including a link from dmoz.org.


How important is a listing on dmoz.org?

Maybe not as important as you think and not as important as it used to be. Not every dmoz listing has value and some are more beneficial than others. But obtaining a listing is potentially very important. In many cases it is the most important link you can get. Your competirors may have a link there already, constituting a potential advantage to them. And if they haven't got a link there yet, you need to assume they will do. So it must be your goal to build a site worthy of a listing on dmoz.org, and to get it submitted or noticed by an editor and listed. (A dmoz.org listing may be particularly beneficial to young websites that have yet to attract other good inbound links.)

Here are two good reasons why a link on dmoz.org is likely to be a good link:
1. A listing on dmoz.org means a link from a page on that domain and dmoz.org has enormous authority in its own right. The dmoz.org index page has a page authority of 94 out of 100. That's like saying it has a Google PageRank of around 9 or 10. Domain authority is also 94/100. There are almost 50,000 domains linking to dmoz.org - with more than 1.5 million links.

2. As mentioned above, ODP listings include anchor text - potentially including relevant keywords (usually the real title of the site). The site description also helps search engines determine the keywords that are relevant to your site, although to a lesser extent.

The Open Directory Project draws a lot of negative comments. But before you evaluate what dmoz.org has done for you, ask yourself what you have done for dmoz.org. Have you submitted only the best websites and taken care to find the most relevant category? If you're so unhappy with the directory then why don't you make a genuine attempt to make it a better place by applying to become an editor - working in the interests of the directory and users of the internet, rather than just your own interests?

If you can contribute positively to the ODP in the spirit of quality, pride and teamwork, then you might just get more back than just having your site listed. You could take pride in helping to build the world's largest and arguably most important online directory. And you get to help other people who care about your interests to find the best websites when they search using Google and other search engines. Because - rightly - the Open Directory can have a significant impact on search results.

Ben Acheson
http://blog.benacheson.com
@BenAcheson

A Royal Twitter Marketing Failure

Amid the buzz surrounding the royal wedding on 29th April, marketers at one brand - Slim-Fast - saw a huge opportunity. They sponsored the #RoyalWedding hashtag on Twitter, hoping to ride on the wave of interest generated by an event watched by billions around the world.

Twitter was awash with hype. The expected web traffic rush threatened to crash Twitter - perhaps even the whole internet.

No doubt the royal wedding hashtag received many millions of views, from people all over the world. In addition to targeting royal wedding watchers, the hashtag trended worldwide on Twitter and was thus potentially visible to all of Twitter's vast user-base.









At face-value this may seem like marketing genius. It is certainly an ingenious example of marketing opportunism.

But exposure does not equal engagement, or increased brand awareness - let alone increased revenues.

A major objective of sponsoring #RoyalWedding must have been to increase the brand's followers substantially. It failed. By 3rd May, including the whole extended holiday weekend, Slimfast won only 336 new followers - out of all the millions of people who must have been exposed to the campaign. This is an extremely poor result and no doubt represents extremely poor return on investment compared to more effective use of Twitter or other digital channels.


Digital medium. Ancient marketing model

So this bad marketing. But in particular, it represents a good case study in bad digital marketing tactics. social media channels enable precision-targeting. They enable marketers to reach out to customers with totally relevant messages, designed to appeal precisely to them, at exactly the moment when they might be interested in hearing them. Effective digital campaigns target tightly-defined market segments, usually with very measurable ROI. (In the case of Slim-fast, the market would no doubt be people who want to lose weight with minimum effort.)


Mass-marketing: not precision-targeting

Twitter in particular enables marketers to connect with customers in exactly this way - with precision. And engagement. Because, even more powerfully, it is an open channel for customers to reach out to brands. On the customer's terms. Social media marketing should put people back at the heart of marketing.

Slim-fast's ploy ignores all the new human-to-human power at marketers' fingertips. Sponsoring a busy Twitter hashtag is the digital marketing equivalent of placing a billboard at a busy road junction. It's mass-marketing, not digital marketing. It's random, not targeted, and it's not welcomed by the vast majority of recipients.

No doubt, in reaching millions of Twitter users, this brand also chanced to reach many thousands of people who might potentially be interested in their product. But they missed whole point of digital marketing!


More BOOM for your buck

To use a military analogy, Slim-fast's mass-marketing broadcast approach to social media is the digital marketing equivalent of using a nuclear missile to sink just one ship.

Sure, you'll sink the ship. But you'll also waste a lot of energy flattening the rest of the fleet! Why not use all the power, all the potential of social media channels, to do what smart digital marketers are doing: engaging effectively with their target audience.

Just as a nuclear power station harnesses enormous power of the atom to supply millions of homes and businesses with energy, marketers can harness digital marketing to engage with millions of interested customers.

Don't just blast people with broadcast marketing over social media. You can still waste your budget doing that with traditional channels.

Social media is supposed to be friendly. Personal... social. It's not a marketing mouthpiece and traditional marketing activity is not usually welcomed in the social space.

Ben Acheson
http://blog.benacheson.com
@BenAcheson

Four Reasons to Build "Nofollow" Links

Are you passing up powerful link-building opportunities? Do you get that sinking feeling when you see rel="nofollow" in the HTML of pages you invested valuable time into identifying? Do you think "nofollow" links have no SEO value? If so, think again. Nofollow links absolutely do have value. And not just SEO value. Effective link building campaigns should integrate with other elements of your digital and traditional marketing strategy. Here are four good reasons why...



1. Users follow links too


You should always build links for people - not search engines. Search engines just try to determine what is best for people. So everything you do should be aimed at people too. Ranking algorithms change, but the fundamental principle of "what's best for the user" will always endure. Search engines will get better at determining what's best for users. So if your link-building campaign is only good for SEO then it is not effective now and it is likely to become less effective as search engines evolve. Any opportunity to share your link with an interested person is good news. If your link building strategy is properly formulated then your links will naturally end up in front of real people who are interested in the topic of your website's content.


2. Social linksThis is my favourite use for nofollow links, and it is potentially worth more than any SEO value that might be gained from a followed link. If you find a great place to build a link but it turns out to be "nofollow", why not link to a good piece of social media real estate, such as your Twitter feed, instead? Social media is shareable and has viral potential. Tap into the networks of all the real people who your link building campaign should be targeting. A social link can prove many times more effective at achieving your business objectives than a followed link. What's more, search engines are increasingly looking to social signals to replace links as the primary ranking signals. In the meantime, if your tweets or social content are shared by a large number of users, it is highly likely that there will be a significant impact on search. AsSEOmoz found, Social affects search.

Social link opportunities highlight the need for an integrated digital marketing strategy. No digital or traditional marketing discipline should work in isolation: each strategy can and should support and feed the others and this is particularly true online. Hopefully this gives you a sense of how everything about your strategy should be natural, organic, human and connected. That leads us neatly into the next reason:



3. Natural is best
Search engines look for a natural balance of links. If your links are all followed then that looks odd - and potentially suspicious. A healthy link portfolio should include nofollow links. (It could be argued that as good, followed links become harder to get, new websites should have a greater proportion of nofollow links).


4. Some "nofollow" links are followed
In some circumstances "nofollow" links can actually yield direct SEO link equity - passing authority and indicating keyword context, just like a followed link. Google tries to downplay this, but there are many cases of nofollow links yielding SEO value.

So there is no good reason to avoid nofollow links. They are a natural, beneficial part of your online environment and should play a considered role in your comprehensive, cross-discipline marketing strategy.

Ben Acheson
http://blog.benacheson.com
@BenAcheson

Ten Top Tips for Twitter Marketing

1. Engage: Follow relevant influencers, and foster the influencers of the future. Don't just follow or engage with people because they have a lot of followers. Follow those whose tweets are compelling to you - and to other like minded people. A high number of followers may indicate a source of tweets that are compelling to others. The higher the number of people they are following, the less this is true. If somebody follows 10,000 and is followed by 10,000 that doesn't really mean anything.) Engage honestly. If you like a tweet, retweet it. But also follow less influential people. Learn from them and help them to grow.

2. Quality, not quantity of followees and followers. Don't seek large numbers of poor quality, irrelevant followers. Only follow people you're proud to follow. Be patient: you can easily get thousands of poor quality, disinterested followers in a short space of time, but you will achieve nothing.

3. Don't tweet too much. Or too often. That might sound counter-intuitive - you do need to tweet frequent, compelling content in order to build a high quality following. But as is true in life generally, if you haven't got something worthwhile, then say nothing. Don't tweet more than three times within the space of 30 seconds, or you'll clog up your followers' feeds and that's annoying. If every other tweet in their feed is yours, because you tweet so often, that also alienates followers - and do you really have that many interesting things to say? These are among the most common reasons people stop following you. But this is another commandment that applies less to very popular people such as celebrities. If people really do hunger for every word then tweet as much as you like about anything.

4. Tweet with the aim of exciting, inspiring and entertaining like minded people. If most of your followers know you, or are a fan of yours, it's just possible they'll find even your most trivial updates worth reading. If not, then don't bore the majority of them with what you had for breakfast.

5. Don't follow just to get followed back. It's unreliable, unsustainable, and selfish. In Twitter, as in life, you generally get back as much as you put in, and reap what you sow. No more, no less.

6. If you wish to honour the author, "Retweet" using the Retweet button.

7. Use "RT @" to build your own Twitter greatness - stand upon the shoulders of giants. But sometimes its nice to honour the original author. Hence you should use number the Retweet button generously.

8. Only retweet what you find compelling. Don't Retweet or "RT" trivia just to flatter the influencer who tweeted it - you'll only bore your own followers.

9. Check Top Tweets and retweet compelling content. The masses have spoken.

10. Be relevant. Focus on your subject - especially if your aim is to build your authority in one particular specialism. Don't use #tags for promotional purposes - use them only to share information with people interested in a topic. Don't dilute your Twitter stream with too much distraction and irrelevance: if you want to tweet on a wide range of unrelated subjects - such as social media and sport - set up two topical profiles. Most Sport fans don't care about social media marketing. Your Twitter feed should be part of your personal marketing campaign. It should be targeted.

Ben Acheson
http://blog.benacheson.com
@BenAcheson

7 Social Media Strategy Questions Answered

Answers to the top seven social media strategy questions

(Read my interview with Viewsline.)

Ben Acheson
http://blog.benacheson.com
@BenAchesonhttp://blog.benacheson.com

Digital Marketing in the Public Sector and Military

Digital marketing is firmly established as a powerful toolkit for communication and engagement - helping business organisations and charities to increase profits or raise funds faster, more efficiently and more effectively. But what of digital marketing benefits to front-line, publicly funded organisations - such as law enforcement, the emergency services, local government, or even the military?

The commercial benefits of digital marketing are well documented. Smart businesses and charities are already using search engine optimisation and search marketing to reach buyers and donors at the instant in which the buyer seeks what the organisation has to offer. The trend towards digital is delivering significantly increased return on investment in marketing, as costs are reduced while conversion rates are increased.

But some front-line public organisations have only recently begun to experiment with digital marketing tactics - although their efforts have been extremely successful.


Examples
Greater Manchester Police launched a Twitter micro-blog feed: @gmpolice. Their tweets raise the profile of their work, whilst helping them to engage with the people they serve. Twitter also enables them to highlight the trivial incidents people report, potentially reducing time wasted in logging and responding to them. And faced with a major incident GM Police could potentially use Twitter to deliver vital information to people who need it.

@gmpolice has more than 18,000 followers - with a followers-to-following ratio of around 100:1.

The celebrity-publicised #SerenaBeakhurst Twitter campaign to find the missing London teenager received an overwhelming response - and found her!

A police Facebook campaign to find the killer of Joanna Yates received more than 63,000 views and generated many new leads, while on Twitter the topic #JoannaYeates received a similar number of tweets within the first day. CCTV footage on YouTube received over 70,000 views.

(Even the much maligned police force of China's usually insular regime is embracing social media engagement!)
What next?

The UK stories, at least, tell of highly successful digital marketing campaigns by any standards. Such dramatic social media success begs the question: what next? Where do they go from here?

More specifically, should they be thinking in terms of broader digital marketing strategy? Could there be a role for other digital marketing tactics in the front-line public sector? Might digital channels and social media even have a place within the military? I really think so. (Social media could be used to counter disinformation deploy propaganda for example, or even to raise a groundswell of support for a revolution or coup d'état to depose a genuinely dangerous regime with minimum bloodshed.)

At this point we are mainly seeing isolated tactical campaigns. The next logical iteration is for front-line public organisations to adopt a strategic approach to digital marketing - to develop integrated marketing and communication strategies with a digital backbone. Given the proven power and cost-effectiveness of digital media campaigns, this progression seems inevitable. And in difficult economic times, when budgets are under pressure, digital marketing in general - and social media in particular - has the potential to cut costs dramatically - enabling officials with an important message to reach out to huge numbers of people - for free.

Ben Acheson
http://blog.benacheson.com
@BenAcheson

Social Media: Building a Better World with CSR

CSR or Corporate Social Responsibility is the idea of organisations taking responsibility for their social and environmental impacts. If taken seriously and implemented properly into corporate strategy, that has to be a good thing for everybody.


But to many organisations taking responsibility appears to be merely a PR exercise, an empty and cynical attempt to attract media coverage, reassure investors, and win business. according to Corporatewatch.org, "CSR is a strategy for avoiding regulation... [and] is a corporate reaction to public mistrust..."

But what if organisations were completely transparent, whether they liked it or not? What if corporate whistle blowers were able to report malpractice to the world in seconds? What if brands were completely at the mercy of all their stakeholders, who were free to criticise the organisation or find out what it was really up to?
Welcome to the world of Social Media - the age of social media transparency is already here. Organisations beware.

It seems inevitable that organisations will grow increasingly conscious of their negative social media profile, and how little control they have over it (as Nestlé discovered to their cost!) Social media awareness increasing within the business world. The use of social media monitoring is increasing, as is CRM platform integration.

Social media activity is increasingly visible to executives and many are likely to be horrified at seeing their brands debated and criticised online, not just within their web and social media assets, but in blogs, forums and social networking sites all over the internet.

Ben Acheson
http://blog.benacheson.com
@BenAcheson

QR Codes: Marketing, Communication and Business uses

The black and white patterned image on the right is a QR code - this one is made with the URL of my website benacheson.com.

If you have a phone or other enabled device, you can scan or photograph this image from your computer screen to your device. It will take you to my website.

QR codes (Quick Response codes) are like bar-codes for the web: they can be read instantly by devices including mobile phones with an in-built camera or bar-code scanner (so-called "mobile tagging").

Rather than product data, QR codes deliver text-based messages - which can include an active URL or hyperlink. That means users can choose to receive your message, in seconds, wherever they are. You can take them to your website, or even a specific page on your website or elsewhere on the web.

That's very powerful. It means you can deliver almost unlimited amounts of information to users on demand. That has some interesting implications for marketing and communication in business.

You can generate your own QR codes in seconds too. There are plenty of websites with free QR code generators.

Because QR codes are still novel, it is quite easy to get users to play with them. They're curiousities. They're almost like a secret symbol. The less information you give about the information on offer the better in many cases. Make people hungry for more and they will scan and have your messages delivered to them.


Examples of business and marketing uses for QR codes

Marketing

Direct mail: why not send direct mail using QR codes? Rather than reading and typing in your URL manually, or searching for your product or information, customers can use your QR code like a real-world hyperlink. Just as they might click a link on your email or web page, they can scan the QR code to access your information.

Interactive outdoor advertising: imagine a huge traditional billboard poster in a busy public place. It is designed to draw people closer. Perhaps it's just your logo, with a gigantic arrow pointing to the bottom corner and perhaps a brief message inviting users to scan a small QR code at an accessible height. You could even display a row of them, one for each persona, product, market segment or industry.

Charities: you could use QR codes instead of collection buckets, to take donors to information about their work - and even a payment page. Rather than have pushy salespeople stopping commuters in the street, why not send out teams of people with QR-code printed t-shirts and baseball caps, asking people to, "scan me!" Let users opt in and donate or buy privately on their smartphone. This sort of new and still radical approach could work equally well for product marketers.


Product information
A store, even a market stall, could use QR codes on its products, to take users straight to a page on a website, with detailed product information - far more than could ever be displayed on the packaging or even in the store environment of most products, such as:

• Text information about the product
• Photos
• Video/audio (for example how to use the product)
• ingredients
• Health and safety information
• Environmental information
• User generated content including reviews and ratings.
• (Can you think of anything else?)
• This could mean product packaging might be produced more cheaply, with less text and images. It certainly means that much more information is available to the customer at the point of sale. (Sellers might even consider providing readers to their customers).

Business information and internal communication
Why not leave QR codes around the office at points where people might want information?

• Here's how to use the photocopier.
• Welcome to reception - scan here to find out more about our company.
• Scan the QR code on sombody's desk to find out their name, role, interests, social and professional networking pages.

These are just a few examples. Creative marketers and communicators will no doubt dream up plenty of other and better applications for QR codes.
I recommend applying them to your marketing campaigns as early as possible - before the novelty wears off. When that happens, they will still have their uses, but without the initial novelty and mistique the response to QR code marketing will be much weaker. As with all marketing trends, businesses should aim to lead the way and move away from the latest fad before it becomes passé.

Ben Acheson
http://blog.benacheson.com
@BenAcheson

Digital marketing with pin-point precision

Digital marketers at Starbucks are pin-pointing mobile phone customers with highly targeted, highly relevant and compelling marketing messages, to which the user can respond and buy with almost no effort at all:

http://www.brandrepublic.com/bulletin/brandrepublicnewsbulletin/article/1035146/starbucks-trials-new-o2-location-based-mobile-marketing-service/

This is a good example of how technology enables digital marketers to target customers with pin-point accuracy and relevance, delivering precisely the right message to precisely the right people, at precisely the right time.


Traditional marketing campaigns waste effort and can alienate people, especially if they target people who have not opted in. In this example not only has the customer opted in, but they're actually walking past Starbucks or even inside the venue, and can get a discounted coffee by taking a couple of steps out of their way.


Everybody wins when digital marketing campaign is properly planned and deployed, with the user at its heart. Online campaigns can be even more user-tailored, and even more powerful.


Welcome to the future of marketing. Are you part of it? Or are you still spamming random people with unwanted messages, intruding on their private lives and repeating dull messages to them everywhere they go? Tomorrow's outdoor advertising posters will display exactly what the viewer was already looking for, when they were looking for it, in a place they can get it. (And give them a discount).

Ben Acheson
http://blog.benacheson.com
@BenAcheson

The best viral ad yet? Tipp-Ex

Take a look at this viral video advert from Tipp-Ex:

http://www.youtube.com/user/tippexperience


Enter a word of your choice. Then try another.

It's more fun if you try to think of a word yourself.

But if you can't think of any more words, there are some examples below...
tipp-ex
eats
drinks
football
laugh
rescue
cook
wrestle
fishing
smokes
dances
asses
plays
jumps
love
tickles
feeds
drunk
prays
marries
buys
becomes
photographs
sings
hugs
strikes
404
cuts
cares
brushes
hangs
listens
listens to
sleeps
shakes hands
high fives
watches tv
bitten by
paints
funk
circus
burps
phones
music
games
riding
shopping
house
kisses
cleans
hates
drives
finds
michael jackson


Ben Acheson
http://blog.benacheson.com
@BenAcheson