Its hard to get listing in Dmoz. I have done and followed their guideline for years and yet none of my submission got listed.
Honestly, getting listed on DMOZ isn't as crucial or beneficial as it was back in the old days. Use your effort to improve on your site, and don't worry about it until later down the road.
The first step would be to determine if your site is listable at all, since certain sites will simply not be listed. This not only includes sites with illegal content (e.g., material that infringes copyrights or other intellectual property rights), but also sites that contain little or no original content (e.g., sites consisting mainly of affiliate links, advertisements, and articles that are being syndicated across the Internet). Keep in mind that the ODP is not a listing service for webmasters; instead, we try to include and describe sites that are valuable resources for end users. If your site contains a lot of unique, useful information, it is probably a good candidate for inclusion; but if it doesn't, it is not.
well read their rules and follow them. submit your website wait 3-4 months and you might be able to get listed i managed to get 20-40 websites listed out of around 100-150 submissions
@ tutorsonweb but I notice e-commerce sites, offering the same line of products get listed in DMOZ. Does that mean new websites can not be listed? I have submited our website thrice already. Giving it 3 months before resubmitting.
Most editors of dmoz categories either dont get round to approving new entries, or have their own websites or friends sites listed in their category so will not approve competitors websites. Many of the sites listed dont even exist anymore so are broken links, or people have re-registered dropped domains just so they have a dmoz backlink. Its not even worth trying to get listed now a days, there are far better and more up to date places to submit your sites.
To formulate a picturesque ... Dmoz is somewhat akin to the Academy of Sciences for the web ... Their opinion and their court is very appreciated ... They will not accept anyone into their society ... If you are in dmoz society, meaning that is worth ... So the listing is waiting for a long time ... Some never waits to be listed at DMOZ .... But when you enter, well, that is another story ...
Having a good, useful site is helpful, for the rest follow the advice in this thread. Important is that your site should add something to the DMOZ directory as a whole, represents something that is not already overrepresented - that is the tricky bit, convincing the editors that your content is unique! SY
Only if they are dofollow and only if they are from blogs that are relevant to your own sites content. They play a rule in the back link profile of a site, but only a little one. Calling them powerful is a bit overstating things ;-) SY