Many many moons ago it was pretty efficient to have your website submitted to directory websites and traffic was scheduled to come in. This was a good deal and a great step when doing SEO for a website. Directory submissions always helped a little bit, even though traffic barely reached hundreds of visitors per day that way. I recently did a test on one of my websites and bought a 750 Directory submission package over at Digital Point. The initial traffic surge upon ordering the package was good. Many directory owners at least took a look and then accepted the website. I probably received about 70 or 80 confirmed listings which I think is pretty decent. But how much link value did I receive? Apparently not much because my stats show a pretty clear picture. 10 unique visitors just does not represent any significant traffic. I used to see more traffic on a new website a year ago. Directory submissions might help to get a website indexed, but they do not help anymore to get any significant rankings in search engines. So, for me that helps to decide to rather spend the $35.00 (or whatever it was) on other forms of SEO.
SEO has become more difficult and you have to be much more creative nowadays to drive traffic to your website. I am sure Google has already de-valued links from del.icio.us and other “top” bookmarking websites. Smaller bookmarking websites might still work for some link power, but in the long run every average SEO will use the same source to get links. The above average SEOs know better sources for sure and still find loopholes around the higher requirements. Anyone who has build up a network of folks has a significant advantage in today’s Internet traffic market.