Not all search engines are aimed at providing straightforward results. Some search portals are hybrid, combining a search engine and a web directory. The search engine part returns automated results, while the directory gives manually found results. Normally, a hybrid will supply hits from the directory as the primary source, with the search engine results of individual pages as the secondary source of which the former is more important to you.
 
Though search engines and directories play an important role in website promotion, choosing the right keyword is the most important factor. The keyword should indicate what your website is all about. Make a list of all keywords with the most important ones at the top. 10 to 15 keywords would be sufficient. Then sort them out and select the most appealing keywords. Taking enough time to choose the keyword is important. This will help you to get noticed more.
 
Once you have the site ready, you can submit them to search portals like Yahoo and Google. Though there are free automated programs which submit your site for free, most search engines do not accept them. So, the best thing to do will be to submit it manually.
 
Google being the most popular search engine, allows you to do this for free. You can also submit your site to Yahoo for free, but you need to be a member of Yahoo. Yahoo is useful because several other search portals use Yahoo's database. After Google, probably the most important place to submit your site to is The Open Directory Project (http://www.dmoz.org/). This is the largest human-maintained directory in the Internet because it allows virtually anyone to access its resources. Once you are included in this, you are automatically included in many other directories.