I am fairly new to SEO, so I was wondering if submitting to Search Engines, (ie Altavista) is better than with directories? Or is the impact the same?
totally different SE Submission: telling the engine that your site exists and usually with a sitemap so which pages to index and how the information is structured Directory Submission: submitting a link to a site for the sole purpose of adding to a collection of links totally different value SE Subs should be mandatory. Directories either cost money, lots of time or is of low quality except for Yahoo and DMoz, both with stringent guidelines. I would recommend doing both.
i should go for directory submitting, find out wich are the "strong" directories in your niche and place your link there. Evantualy the SE spiders will crawl your link and thus your site.