If you've been in the Internet Marketing industry for any length of time, then you will have heard of the "ODP" or "DMOZ", the Open Directory Project that resides at www.dmoz.org. The ODP is a large general Web directory edited by volunteers. And for years it was considered almost the holy grail for inbound link developers. Some still consider it to be so.
A member at WebmasterWorld asks "Is DMOZ still relevant in 2009?". The responses are interesting.
As part of our SEO campaigns, we do perform directory submissions to a select number of top-tier general directories and a small number of niche directories (the number depends on the niche). The ODP is still in the top 3 of our most desirous general directory link acquisition targets. But it's certainly not a holy grail of any sort.
The ODP certainly has is problems. It's very slow to get anything listed in the ODP due to the lack of editors/volunteers as compared to the volume of submissions they receive. Internet users seem to be tending away from directory type Websites and converging on social/search type sites. And, ODP hasn't done anything even remotely innovative in years (in fact, I don't know if they've done anything innovative, ever.)
But the ODP still gets used in countless places across the Web. So a listing/link in the ODP inherently means links from many other places. The value of the ODP link itself probably carries more weight than all of the subsequent links combined, but it's still a positive.
Yep - for me submitting to the ODP is still relevant in 2009. Not as much as it used to be, certainly. But it's still relevant. I do however recommend that you read my insights on submitting to directories for SEO.