I am trying an automatic submission software to submit some sites to directories. I know this is very controversial. Some would say this is spam but this kind of software can save you a lot of time, specially if you can customize it adding your own directories (relevant to your niche). What do you think?
Personally I don't think the directories would be able to tell whether you use automated software or not. Just be careful about how many directories you submit to in a short period of time. If you submit to too many, the search engines may just disregard all of the links as obvious spam.
Another reason to be careful with automated submissions, if your site ends up on the wrong directories, or in the wrong categories, it will decrease your serps for your niche. Google and other search engines have also been phasing out directories from their criteria, as it's well known that they are commonly misused. The best directories to submit to, are the big ones that actually have real traffic and will send visitors to your site, rather than using them as an attempt to increase your SEM.
Most directories an't worth it any if you ask me. You could be spending your time on other, more effective link building efforts.
Your best choice is the semi-automatic submission with title and description rotation from time to time. Everything else will be too close to pure spam and Google won't like it very much.
I disagree with UrbanWeb's comments about bad directory listings decreasing your SERPs. That is definitely not true. If it were, I'd be busy submitting all of my competitor's websites to every bad directory/category I could find.
I think if its extremely customizable it would be a great resource. but google is very stingy you could possible get a penalty for spam... i don't know of any programs that would be this customizable thought.
No, for me, i don't find if very effective even its a time saving methods. Manual submissions is still the best for me.
i've used submission software, but I alternate my title and text every once in a while so I don't have 1001 directory links with the same anchor text. I do the same when submitting articles to article directories.
Manual submissions always rocks as the directories can easily reject the links just by checking the http agent as these links will not have any browser referral.
I agree with Zexy. Titles and Meta should be changed by time to time and it will give good results in rankings too.
I am using manual submission because you can really choose title and description unlike automatic submission. But anyway I am also curious about it so can you recommend automatic software that I can used since I am interested in using them as well.