Directory submissions have value still.
Dmoz.org is highly regarded as a good directory to get listed.
Focus on niche / industry relevant directories where possible. Relevance of inks is key.
Paid directories have less "spam" and therefore a few paid directories can give the benefit of 10's of low quality free ones. Many are very low cost eg. £15 per year.
You can't blanket all directories as the same.
For example if your company and website are listed in yellowpages.com this is a positive thing and a good link. It's a human edited directory full of ways to stop spammers getting in and search engines know it.
On the other hand directories that are just pages full of links where you can regsiter anything you like are worthless.
A good directory submission to a quality directory can take up to an hour but will count for far more than getting 20 entries on directories that search engines see as nothing more than link farms.
Directory submissions certainly will not get you penalized. However, they generally do not have much value any more as Google has reduced the value of such links and as directories in general are used less than ever before (people use search engines, social media etc. to find what they want).
That said, submitting to some of the better directories might help. However, I would not put too much into it.
Directory submissions are still working. The changes which have come are that you have to submit according to your topic and can't submit in the irrelevant categories as now the search engines have started penalizing such submissions. So you can submit your URL only in relevant categories of a site.
The best directory submission site is Dmoz.org
Nothing at all. Its totally wrong information. Directory Submission is the most valuable links on google
It works if you do it properly. You need to choose the best article directories like Ezine, Sooperarticles, goarticles, etc. You could buy articles from here http://scriptsgenie.com/ and publish them on various directories. All articles are unique.
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I recently hear, according new seo updates, directory submissions no more works. Is it true?