You hear a lot of SEO experts and people in general online talking about how you should submit your website to website directories to gain backlinks. And you see directory submission services charging to submit your site to 1000 directories for pennies. Well I'm here to tell you that you don't need to submit your site to hundreds of directories and I'd actually advise against it.
1. For one, the majority of directories online won't pass any value onto your site because they don't have Pagerank. In the big lists of directories some people publish you will only find a select few that actually have Pagerank on their subpages. That means you won't be receiving any Pagerank if that is what you're after.
2. For Two, Google and other search engines can tell what sites are directories and may not even count the links on those sites merely because they want to dissuade people from having the ability of buying a link. So paying for a link on some of these directories might be is a total waste of time and money.
3. Gaining hundreds or even a thousand links at a time from directories might actually harm your site in that the search engines see this as you trying to gain a bunch of backlinks in a short period of time by buying them. If there is any reason why your site would gain so many backlinks in a short period it should be because you wrote some content so good that tons of people linked to you or you created something and shared it where a link back to your site was built in.. ie an awesome wordpress template, a wordpress widget, etc.
I advise if you are thinking about submitting your site to web directories to stick with niche directories, ie. ones that are related to your site. If you're a photographer then I'd submit my site to only directories for photographers, not general all-purpose directories.
But there is an exception to this. The best directory online that you should definitely consider submitting your site to is Best of the Web's directory. Established in 1994 this directory has stood the test of time and is maintained by some very nice people. And your link will actually be picked up by Google and other search engines. And they offer 60 days of free advertising if you are looking for a top sponsored link on any of their pages. Botw.org is by far the one directory I'd recommend to get listed on. Even over Yahoo's or Dmoz.org.
