Directory submissions
How good and useful are directories for marketing your site, getting traffic to it and in terms of seo (do they count as back links)
I have just submitted my site into several directories.
I am not selling anything so am just interested in getting eyeballs onto the site.
Is it worth paying for premium directory listings and if so which ones
Directories can be useful for creating backlinks, but don't expect too much traffic from them. If you don't have a list of directories you can find one quite easily through a google search, I use a list from onewaytextlink dot com. The first thing to check before submitting to free directories is that it has PR - Google culled a large number of free directories early this year, presumably because it considered them link farms, so if the home page of a directory has no PR ignore it.
I used to always recommend owners of new sites to pay Yahoo the money for inclusion as this would prompt a near immediate indexing by Google, but if I remember correctly Google has now said that it does not pay any particular attention to sites added to the Yahoo directory, so getting a quick indexing by the main search engines is probably just as easily achieved by getting a link from an established site and by creating an xml sitemap and submitting this to Google.
Submitting to free directories is time consuming, and you can wait a long time for some of them to include you. Before you begin, create a .doc containing your site title and descriptions (create them in different sizes i.e. 100, 200, 300 & 500 chars in length), plus a list of keywords for your site. This will allow you to copy and paste across to the submission pages. Keep your titles tight, use your company name plus one keyphrase, and possibly your location, and vary your title every ten or so submissions to ensure you have a selection of your most important keyphrases in the link text. Give yourself an hour or so every evening for this work, and by the end of the month you'll have applied to most of them.
Tip: Create a separate email address for these submissions. Many directories appear to be set up to gather addresses so the owners can market their products, so when you've submitted to them you'll find yourself receiving a lot of spam thereafter, this won't be a problem if you have a different email address eg
subs@xxxx.com