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Jeff Behrendt recently offered some great advice over at Search Engine Journal in 7 Costly Mistakes Webmasters Make About Web Directories.
One of the points that really should be emphasized is the mistake of not varying your anchor text and descriptions:
Costly Mistake #5 - Not varying anchor text and descriptions. From what I’ve seen, a lot of submitters seem to use the same anchor text and description for all of their directory submissions. My editors spend a large amount of time re-writing this. A good way to set up a red flag with Google is suddenly to gain a lot of links to your site with the exact same anchor text and the exact same surrounding text. Ideally, all of your directory submissions should use unique wording. At the very least, have several versions of anchor text and descriptions that you use when submitting to directories.
Consider the possible consequence of replicating the same listing hundreds of times over (think duplicate content/supplemental results) and it’s easy to see how you’re contributing to the probability that the listing/link will provide you with little if any benefit.
Many complain that submitting to free directories is a waste of time as they don’t provide any boost or juice, yet they don’t try to maximize the potential when submitting.
Reading comments and posts across a variety of webmaster forums I’m intrigued by what I’ll call a misunderstanding of Supplemental results for a web directory.
You see posts from directory owners inviting comparisons of the number of Supplemental results or the percentage of pages labeled Supplemental. You’ll also see posts stating that some web directories have more pages in the Supplemental index than they have cached and indexed in the main index.
I find that it’s difficult to make a sound assessment of a web directory based solely on the number of results returned when querying Google for Supplemental pages. The number of results returned can be deceiving, and through a simple misunderstanding it’s easy to get the impression that it may not be worthwhile to have a listing in such a directory or that the directory owner is just not doing a good job.
I’m sure that we’re well versed on what a Supplemental page is, and also that these pages are likely to receive little if any traffic due to the limited exposure they’ll receive.
Before condemning a web directory because of the number of Supplemental pages, it’s a good idea to review the results and better understand why Google is returning those pages as Supplemental.
A new project we’re overseeing in an attempt to improve the overall quality of the index as well as it’s visibility and interest is the Link Book Web Directory.
It’s a general topic web directory which currently utilizes a popular directory script and a free template. Starting out as a free web directory had its pitfalls, and one of the most noticeable problems we’ve encountered is webmasters trying to take advantage of a fresh index by submitting anything and everything anywhere and everywhere.
The number of multiple submissions of the same URL utilizing a different title or description is interesting, and has given me a different view of some of the webmasters I’m acquainted with. We’re running some simple SQL queries to locate and delete the multiple listings; the worse offender has had almost 40 listings for his site(s).
Sites with little content such as eBay and Amazon stores, one page eBook sites, affiliate driven sites, pharmaceutical sales and adult entertainment affiliates are being removed. MFA sites are slowly getting weeded out as well, as these sites offer little useful original content.
I don’t see that this may have been a problem as I seriously doubt there was any harm to having those sites listed. We hope that we’re able to have the majority of these sites removed before the new pages are fully indexed.
Anyway, a new logo is in the works to go with a customized template from Shabu Anower at OSDesigner.net. It’s a variation of the StoneFlash template, which is simple and functional. We’re looking to place the emphasis on our content - your listing.
URL rewrite wasn’t in use, so that was one of the first changes, and we’re renaming the category paths and hope these new pages get indexed and the old pages drop out within a reasonable amount of time.
Some titles and descriptions will be updated to conform to basic guidelines, some of the titles and descriptions are nothing but hype and of little use to some one browsing the directory. If anyone is unhappy after we edit their listing, please feel free to contact us and we’ll have it permanently removed from the index.
We will be manually adding quality sites in categories to provide our visitors with a positive experience, I know how much I dislike using a directory with few or poor quality listings.
We’re also accepting user submitted sites which are subject to a nominal review fee. Featured Listings are available for web sites owners who want the maximum exposure that a directory listing can provide.
Please feel free to stop by to check out Link Book Web Directory. We hope you notice the positive changes we’re making. 
Seems Google is once again giving some weight to alt text for images. Previously disregarded unless the image was hyperlinked, alt text once again appears to be a contributing factor in the search results.
This was generally abused by webmasters trying to gain an edge over the competition by using a long string of keywords and ignoring usability.
I wouldn’t rush out and start changing all of the alt text attributes on your web pages hoping for an edge, I really doubt it’s given serious weight.
Remember, it’s all about the visitors.
I’m always asked a number of questions regarding the basic elements or the nuts and bolts of optimizing a web page. This is probably a good a place as any to offer some thoughts regarding simple optimization.
Optimizing web pages for your visitors instead of spiders usually yields the best long term results. Creating web pages for your target audience will provide plenty of spider food for the search engines.
If you’re creating an eCommerce site, keep in mind that spiders don’t carry credit cards, so there’s really no need to try to over impress them.
Okay, so you’ve discovered that someone ranking above you in the search results is using hidden text on their web page.
White, off-white or very light grey text on a white background, a long list of keywords or a paragraph that really makes no sense but is so full of search terms and keyword phrases you’d think a spider would choke on all that crap.
Spammer! Gotcha!
Most of the major search engines have a form for reporting search quality issues, so you fill out the form and wait for the page to drop from the search results so that your own page will move up one spot.
And you wait…..
And you wait…..
And you wait…..
And nothing happens. And you can’t figure out why, search engines are pretty clear about their quality guidelines. Attempting to manipulate the search results should result in the removal from their index.
So you fill out the form again as you’re sure it was just overlooked. Again, nothing happens.
So now you’re thinking “what the fuzzuck does it take to get this spammer out of the search results?”
Well, for starters, hidden text is rarely, if ever, going to get someone manually removed from the search results. The random, temporary removal of a few sites by some search engines is just an attempt to convince you of their ability to identify and remove pages utilizing techniques designed to manipulate the search results.
More importantly, text is just text - hidden or not. If you’re unable to obtain better rankings than a page utilizing hidden text, why do you think you could if the text were visible? You really should be looking at other factors.
And spam reports don’t qualify as SEO. But, I think you already knew that.