A reciprocal link directory if a vital part of having a good Google page rank. However there are ways to make it a useful and important part of your website for reasons other than a high ranking in the Google directory.
Placing those ads on your site are designed to do just one thing, make you and the advertiser money. No it's not rocket science but there is a science to doing it right.
Submitting your website to the main search engines should be handled with care. Do it right, and the rewards can be great.
So you want to get a Google top page rank and get your site listed on the first page when an internet surfer types in your keywords, right?!? Of course you do. At one time it was extremely important to get as many sites linking to you as possible, so the Google bots would spider your site, see all of these sites linking to you, and determine that your site must be of some importance because so many others are linking to it.