Directory Listing, Is it really worth it?

All SEO guys know what Directory Listing is where all of them might have done Directory Listing at one time or the other :)
Though there are a lot "new & attractive" things in SEO now and SEO guys these days adopt a mixed strategy of the various techniques for their projects, the undercurrent (which I have observed at times)is that people start neglecting Directory Submission activities with more emphasis on the other techniques.
In my opinion Directory Listing is one of the most effective technique for getting the site the desired place in search results. Submissions in relevant and good PR pages works wonders as it shows the Spiders that the site "sits" good on the factual and advantage grounds in other sites too. This also enables getting good traffic and Search Engines always respect such sites. Directory Listing in sites having a "dofollow" attribute are really effective. Let me point out here that some good Directories giving paid link services are really helpful to a great extent. (The same is with Article Submission sites too!). At a considerably low cost your site link would show up in top slot in the particular Directory and the keywords being "sensitive" for such links, your site would be among the top listings in search results. Such Listings make the keywords important for Search Engines and this means a definite advantage as the keyword that you worked on is considered as "important" by Search Engines !
As they say, there is nothing like free lunch, the same goes with good SEO practices. Good Directory Submissions mean that they are relevant, clean and enjoy preference over the "free" ones !

SEO and Sales !

A recent Sales promotion campaign my friend did for his business left me wondering whether it was really worth it !
My friend had advertised heavily through print media and on net about the extension of his furnishing business. He had taken two shops adjacent to his own and had now one of the largest showrooms and services staff in the city.
Months of advertising and many discount coupons and then when he checked back after a month of the promotional activities (after the coupons expiry date) he found out that only 17% of the coupons were not claimed and yet his sales were somewhat same as before ! This clearly meant that though the coupons were redeemed by the customers and there were huge crowds the entire month, all had happened was that the majority existing customers had utilized the coupons in their regular purchases/services! He called me then to find out the reason for this.
As it came out very clearly, the promotion campaign and the tools which my friend had put into service were not effectively utilized. I found out that there were ads on his site and related sites too but the entire campaign lacked direction.
No "specific" terminology used, not a single instance of effective and researched words (Keywords) and phrases and not at all focused on the market segment and business type they wanted to target!!
In the name of sales promotion, the entire activity had clearly suggested that it was best if my friend had not thought of using it at all...what a waste of time and money and a sorry wastage of a wonderful chance of using the simplest SEO things for effective and practical results !!!
I hope other business people are not going the wrong way !

Do we use Keywords effectively?

Just came across a site and I must say I really wanted to contact the site manager to tell them about the mess they did on their keywords.

The site people had used misformed phrases, improper keywords and there were the tell tale signs of "over stuffing".
The proper way to use keyword/phrases is to use them in titles, sub-titles, bullets and in the beginning/end of paragraphs etc. Again, these should be used keeping the language factor in mind. Proper language with meaningful words go a long way in showing the "real" thing in site content. The same is true for articles etc.

Keyword stuffing means the site would be shifted back many pages when Google comes to know about it. This effectively kills all the SEO shortcuts people use but also kills all the previous good SEO efforts as well.