By Clare Lawrence
Directories can play an important role in a website promotion program.
Google the leading search directory places considerable importance on links from related themed pages.
Provided a directory is organised so that its pages have a focused theme then getting a listing will help your sites ranking.
This is also the reason it's important to submit your site to the most closely related theme category to your own.
Submitting sites to directories helps in two ways; directly by bringing traffic as a result of search queries and indirectly through link popularity.
Only a limited number of directories are sufficiently popular to warrant a listing for traffic alone.
Two, which do fit the bill being:-
DM0Z (the open directory) and Yahoo
A lot of directories change for inclusion, but if you look around you will find there are literally 100's of free directories.
A few to get you started are:-
Gimpsy
Wowdirectory
Allthebizz
Smallerbizz
Joeant
If your looking for more try
http://www.wowdirectory.com/resources/