I - Website promotion, phase one - Directories
Step 1 - General information - Submitting to directories is easy and doesn't require much effort.
Step 2- The Open Directory Project - Start with the Open Directory Project. While your site has to offer good, unique content to be accepted to the ODP, its editors usually review sites quickly and won't reject them without a good reason for doing so.
Step 3 - Yahoo - After securing a listing at ODP, your next task is to get the folks at Yahoo to notice that your site exists and is worth a place in their directory. This might cost you a fair amount of money if you are running a commercial site, but is usually worth it.
II - Website promotion, phase two - Search engines
Step 1 - Search engine optimization, basics
Step 2 - Search engine optimization, advanced - Your site is now adequately prepared to really start bringing in traffic from search engines.
Step 3 - Submitting to search engines - Now is the time to make sure that your site has a presence in the indexes of major search engines.
After being accepted into the largest directories and having pages of your site come up in answer to searches done at the major search engines.