I can't remember if I read this on here or somewhere else - but if you've just gone live with a new site and spend a couple of days submitting to directories etc, does Google just see a mass of links and penalize you for it ie "unnatural link patterns" etc.
I think that is a buch of bull. Google is going to put you in the aging delay, sandbox, or whatever you want to call it. Theres no use trying to figure out a formula on how to avoid it. But if your main concern is Google then while you are in this period aim for low competition keywords as you can still rank for them. When you start of a new site just create links naturally. If you find a site that you would want your link and it would benifit you do it.
I would submit to a couple directories that are cached often. Basically you just want to make sure your site gets indexed to start. Then focus on a link building plan that looks natural. You want to gradually acquire links over time for a new site. That is unless your site is very unique and has something that would naturally attract links at a very rapid pace. Search for Katrina Housing http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&q=katrina housing The number one site was registered in August of 2005. These are over 27 million results for the term. The term is not highly competitive and the site deserves a large number of links very quickly. It came up with 6,620 in Yahoo with linkdomain. Just my thoughts...
I don't think it matters too much. Personally I find the free version of web ceo removws lots of the submission leg work