Having link-to-this-page code is an idea I have never really considered. I’m going to have to try that out.

I know of many sites who have a section on their site, which is full of articles that they have written. Now if these are useful, perhaps giving people the option to link to these articles could help. Perhaps also trying to be an expert in your field and writing articles for other sites will help to.

The more time goes on, the more I feel a links directory is completely useless, however I still use them on some of my sites, but try and think from a users point of view – if it’s not going to interest them and isn’t a professional site, I won’t link to them.

If the thing that works the best is natural incoming links, then is there even a purpose for SEO consultants anymore? It seems that nothing can be done but write unique, interesting content for the targeted niche of that web site.

How about paid links? Some sites have like $1 for a link and so on.

See above; I addressed that topic in some detail.

I have a simple question. many sites offer automatic link submission to directories. Such as lazyseo.com for example that i found yesterday. My question is, is it worth it?

I wouldn’t pay any amount for directory submissions. 99% of what they submit to are directories that are nothing but spam collectors with no actual traffic, accepting every auto-submission they get. Not only are sites that are nothing but link farms ignored by the major search engines, but even those that aren’t will have so many links on a page that their nonexistant pagerank is divided so many times you get no benefit. As for lazyseo in particular, they even provide the script to set up a directory with all their categories for them to autosubmit to, inflating the number of directories they claim you’ll be listed on.

When you come across a nice topical directory that’s part of a bigger site, has some actual traffic, and isn’t filled to the brim with 200 links to a page, take the time to submit your site yourself, tailoring your submission to the interests of that site’s users.