Getting accepted into the Open Directory Project is not easy. The submission of your home page should be approach with great care. The Open Directory is not really as important to a search engine positioning campaign as a standalone search engine; however, it provides its data to many other search engines including Google and other engines.

The best way to be successful in the Open Directory is to build an informative, attractive Web site with valuable content. When you are ready to submit your site to the Open Directory, be sure that the site is ready for visitors; the worst possible mistake would be to have an editor visit a site under construction or that does not load. The Open Directory will not accept sites that redirect to other pages, contain an excessive amount of affiliate links or other heavily self-promotional content, or are irrelevant to the chosen category. All submissions will be reviewed by human editors in specialized ODP categories, it is crucial to ascertain that submitted Web sites are completed free of these troublesome characteristics.

Make sure that you carefully select where your site best fits. The most crucial factors to focus on are relevance of the Open Directory Project categories and the content and description submitted to those categories. Don't shoot for the top-level category if a subcategory more accurately reflects your site.

The key to getting a great placement in the Open Directory Project are two principles: writing a strong and accurate description, and choosing the right categories for your site. Choosing your categories should be your first order of business, as category selection will affect how your write your description. Take time to surf through the various categories and make special note of those you feel best reflect your site. Remember the prevailing question in search engine positioning: Does your site satisfy the intent of the query? For example, would someone looking through the Collectibles and Miniatures category feel that your site was an appropriate match in that category? Or are you submitting it in that category solely to increase your presence on the Web, regardless of how accurate a fit your site actually is?

Once you have chosen your categories, you should strive to craft descriptions tailored exclusively for your categories and your site. Pay close attention to the descriptions of sites already included in the Open Directory categories...what styles of writing are used? Is there any consistent typical length that you can detect? What kind of information about the sites tends to be included in the descriptions? Detecting patterns in descriptions is very important, because these patterns reflect the preferences of the individual editors in each Open Directory Project category. The more you can make your description appeal to the editor of the category you are trying to get your site into, the more likely it is that you will succeed!

As the Open Directory is a human-edited directory staffed by volunteers. It could take up to several months for your submission to get picked up by other search engines that use Open Directory data.