Getting your site correctly listed in all the top search engines and directories is essential for high ranking search engine results. Don't get fooled by the offers on the Internet to re-submit your site to ten thousand search engines every five minutes. It really is not necessary. Most directories require a 'one off' inclusion, with occasional sites, such as the Yahoo Directory, that requires an annual fee to maintain your site in their listings.

SUBMITTING TO DIRECTORIES

Directories are Search Engines where human editors compile the listings for the web sites. Getting listed with the major directories is essential, because, besides getting human traffic, your web site would also have higher chances of being found and indexed by the crawler based search engines for free. Submitting to directories is important because, incoming links to your site from other.

Realize your true online marketing potential quality sites plays a vital role with some major search engines in finding and listing your site in their search results. Since the human editors have already reviewed the sites listed with the Directories, so the search engines too consider them worth indexing.

Provide useful, informative content, as good content is the key with directories. Before submitting to a directory, make sure there are no under-construction signs on your web site. This is because incomplete or under-construction pages would fail to secure a listing with the major directories.

The description of your site should be well written, concise, easy to understand plus inclusive of your keywords and key phrases. If the description written by you is not appropriate, then the directory’s editor would write a description for you, which might not do justice to your web page. Hence, creating a good description tag of 25-30 words for your web page is essential.

Submitting to Yahoo!

Yahoo offers users with listings that come from a multiplicity of data sources, with a major chunk coming from Google. Apart from this, paid placement ads from Overture and Yahoo’s own human-compiled listings are given too.
Yahoo provides two types of submission services. These are ‘Standard’ and ‘Yahoo Express’ or ‘Business Express’. While the Standard option offers free submission, a submission fee is charged for submitting to Yahoo Express.
Why would one pay to get their site submitted, when the same can be done free of cost, especially when Yahoo offers both the services? This is because, Paid submission ensures a faster listing with the directory as opposed to Standard (free) Submission which can take up to months without any guarantee of being listed.

Submitting to The Open Directory or Dmoz

The Open Directory, also known as ODP (Open Directory Project) and Dmoz (Directory Mozilla) is a directory maintained entirely by volunteers. Dmoz was originally started by Netscape, and over a period of time the directory has grown considerably in size.
Information from the Open Directory is provided to the users through two methods. One is from ODP site directly, and secondly through license agreements with other Search Engines. Netscape Search, Dogpile, Lycos, Hotbot, Altavista, AOL Search and Google feature Open Directory categories within their result pages. Because of this, being listed with The Open Directory is a must for all site owners.
Though submission to The Open Directory is absolutely free, yet the only hitch is that, you may have to wait for some time before your entry is reviewed and added to the directory’s results.
For submitting to The Open Directory, search for the most suitable category (that your site fits into) first, followed by a suitable and informative description of your site.

Some useful tips for submitting to The Open Directory:

Remember to read the Directory’s guidelines carefully before submitting your page at the page given above. Submit under the World/ Directory category if your site is in any other language besides English. For any queries or concerns related to submission, you can e-mail the editor of the concerned category and seek guidance.

Submitting to LookSmart

LookSmart provides the main listings used by MSN Search as well as other Search engines. Therefore, getting listed with LookSmart is essential for site owners.
This directory is primarily focused on searches for English-language sites that appeal to a larger audience or sites in the U.S.
LookSmart offers two options for submission, which are similar to what Yahoo offers. There is a free submit option for the non-commercial categories and a paid option for the commercial categories.
Since LookSmart owns Zeal (another Directory which uses volunteer editors), so the non-commercial listings with Zeal are included by LookSmart in its own database. Hence, to submit for free with LookSmart, one needs to go to zeal.com first.
You can sign up as a member with Zeal, by taking the zealot quiz through the link given below:
http://www.zeal.com/users/become a zealot.jhtml

You can submit your site to a non-commercial category after passing the membership test. This can be done by using the ‘Manage’ option near the top of the category page and ‘Add a Site Profile’ near the top where the sites are listed.
In case, one attempts to submit commercial content under non-commercial categories, the submission is rejected.

Other Useful Suggestions

Don’t miss out on the Regional Directories, which maybe pertaining to your specific region. All the major Directories like Yahoo offer this option. Please do not submit your URL more than once a month. Multiple submissions of the same URL directories could be considered spamming and therefore may ban you from being listed. We have listed web direcories with a PR of 7 or higher in this section, cause we consider that to be "major" in terms of importance. Meaning that a link from a high PR site is beneficial for a websites overall search engine ranking.