Your best bet is to start with the free directories until you know your way around. There are more than enough to keep you busy.
You may have to start checking for yourself. Give yourself a chance to make mistakes. You will learn better... Search for as many directories as you can and try to evaluate them. Then see how it goes.
A niche directory, on the same topic as your website, will offer the best quality backlink for your website. On-topic links are of more value.
I just wanted to ask if directories with 0 or no Google PR are okay to submit your links to.. I avoid them and choose directories that have at least PR 3, only thing is, there are more sites that I have to compete with in terms of getting first page results when the category my site belongs to is searched..
You want to catch the new directories whilst they are still free and relatively empty. Once they get indexed and even if they are lurking in the Supplementary index, the back links count. Forget about PR. Its window dressing and has little or no relevance when it comes to back links. The smaller the directory, the better your chances are of being found by the spider but the question you must ask is how long is the directory owner going to keep renewing the name and how long they are going to keep the directory.
In my experience PR makes little or no difference to the quality of a back link. Accepted that there are authority sites which do have a high PR but that does not necessarily mean that a link from a high PR site is any more useful than any other link. Most people seem to think that content and relevance is important but that has yet to be proved conclusively.
Usually higher PR sites get crawled more often. So it's always better to get a link from high PR site. Google finds your site fast that way. I have just submitted to few high PR directories for my new site about 4 days ago. G has indexed mine and now I can see my ranking in the SERP as well. I usually consider those backlinks to be quality as G found my site in 48 hours. If you are thinking of SEO for a higher ranking in the SERP, you may want to focus more on relevant backlinks.
Fair enough but all it takes is one link to be found and thereafter I cant see much difference. Links are a long term affair and its best to grow your presence slowly and steadily rather than in spurts.
Well, I'm not too sure about growing your site *slowly*. Being careful is one thing but being slow seems another thing My promotion is for long term actually. I will keep promoting it. So, it's not one-time event. Any successful businesses advertise and promote heavily initially because the start is very important. Only excess link exchange kind of link building could be risky due to the sandbox. Other than that, I think building quality links is always good.