Shooting yourself in the foot with directory sumissions

This is one point I disagree with this author on. His "SEO Plan" is a good one, other than this one point.

You want the search engines to find you normally. The whole idea with submitting to directories is to speed up the process of them finding you. However, you either spend time, money, or both to manually submit your sites. Practically, if you did want to submit your site, you would only submit the home page and let the search engines do the rest.

However, even this isn't needed. You can and should be (for writers) submitting articles - which will link to that home page (just use the higher PR and Alexa article directories...). If you don't feel like you can write that much, then comment on some high-ranking blogs. If you don't want to
write even that much, then social bookmark your top page to all the top social bookmarking sites.

And you can always make a Squidoo lens and shout it to the world, giving yourself a ton of backlinks just there.

If you have an active blog, post about it. Because you're active, that blog will be spidered faster and your new link will show up and then added to their files.

But don't succumb to needing to post your site page to directories via an automated software program. This risks you getting banned, which the below author agrees with.

Best is to put your link on high-ranking sites through comments, social bookmarking, or articles. Those are the "normal" ways search engines like to hear about stuff. And will rank you higher because they like your stuff more when they find it on their own - or so I'm told.

Directory Submission and Directory Submission Services:
"The best method to get your new website indexed naturally is through submitting your website to some good directories. As stated above, you should be mindful of which directories you submit your website to.

"Directory submissions should only be done one time to several hundred, search engine friendly, directories. After your site has been listed with the directories, do not pursue this method of gaining links anymore.

"After directory submissions it is time to move into building one way and reciprocal links to your site. Continuing to submit your site to directories with no other types of inbound links will cause the search engines to penalize you. There must be a fine balance between directory links, one-way links and reciprocal links."