Is DMOZ link still valuable?

In this post I would like to write about importance and difficulty to gain link from DMOZ directory. Many of us are trying to gain this back link. And most of us are unsuccessful. Why?
Owner of ODP project DMOZ was Netscape Division. It was founded in 1998. In the past importance of DMOZ listing was axiom. All main Search engines as Netscape Search, AOL Search, Google, Lycos, HotBot, DirectHit, and hundreds of others used data from DMOZ as source for their results. You can see it on next picture:

But in January 2007 situation changed as you can see on next chart:

As you can see DMOZ as source for main search engine disappears. Why?
After system failure and editing outage from October to December 2006, DMOZ shows only older version of data in catalog. DMOZ has also problem with corruptive editors. It is not surprising. Editors are spammed with tons of submits, and possibility to earn some money for their services is very seductive. After ignoring DMOZ as source for search engine, importance of DMOZ decreased. But is link from DMOZ still important? It is not important for SERP, but it has historical value. Presence in DMOZ has for webmaster meaning. It is mark of "domain quality", because domain was approved in DMOZ directory. Especially while selling domain, presence in DMOZ can increase domain price. And how to gain it. Nobody knows. While submitting it is important read carefully all rules. And once, maybe, your page will be in DMOZ results.

Sources:
Search engine relationships chart
Bruce Clay™, Inc

What is important while submit to directories?

Submit to directories is one from the most important sources to gain back links to your web project. Additionally do we control format of the link. That means that we are choosing anchor text and category of page where the link will be situated. This is very important from view of SEO, because not only power, respectively Google page rank of page with back link is important, but also category of pages with back link. It is important to have similar category with your content.

First of all, choose directories specialized for your niche. Back links from that kind of directories are usually more valuable than from general directories. And also traffic from these directories is greater than from general.

If your pages are specialized for specific region prefer submit to local directories. People from region usually know local directories and they are looking there, where the want to find something on Internet. This is important especially for other than English sites. This kind of directories has usually higher page rank than general directories.

Submit to directories is not important for straight traffic, you will not gain a lot of traffic from directories. But with increasing number of back links from right pages with good anchor text is page more powerful for search engines, and position of page on search engines for specific keywords is improving. A with good position in search engines are traffic to page rapidly growing.

Whiles submit to general directories it is important to choose right category. Sometimes are suitable for page more categories and it is good to choose correct one. It is better to choose category with less links. This is why I also prefer new directories. Your link is on better position on page, and page rank of these directories is usually growing, together with your link.