Hand Submssions
You should submit to search engines and you should submit to directories to promote site. We have been doing site submissions to get more traffic for years. We prefer to hand submit to register sites rather than work on link exchange. Requesting links can be effective, but is more work, with site submissions you can get a link with no link exchange needed. If you use a paid search engine or directory submission service, make sure they submit your site by hand or the work they do may not be very effective.

Search Engine Marketing
This saves time  on the web promotions and will still increase web traffic. Just make sure that you do your keyword research first, then your SEO or search engine optimization, and lastly submit your site. If you do this correctly you may not need to spend time and money on search engine marketing. But if you need more traffic, search engine marketing can deliver it, but it will come at a cost.