There are a ton of blog search engines and directories out there. You can add your blog and RSS feed to many of these services. Here are some links to get you started:

http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

http://feedshark.brainbliss.com/

http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm

One of the most important things to do is to “ping” these types of services when you post a new article. A ping is just a short message to these sites to say “Hey! I’ve updated. Can you come take a look?”

Some blog search engines will routinely update based on your RSS feed so there is no need to ping them. However, because of the sheer number or blogs available and the processing power needed to routinely check each site’s RSS feed, this method is fairly rare.

Many blog software applications have settings to send pings automatically every time you post a new article. See your specific blog applications documentation on setting up this feature. You can also manually ping a number of sites at the same time using a service called Ping-o-matic (http://pingomatic.com). In the case of using tags, you can also ping Technorati manually (http://www.technorati.com/ping.html). Ping-o-matic pings Technorati for you so there is no need to do both unless you experience problems.

This step is absolutely critical. If these services don’t know that you updated, they can’t share your updates with their users. Take the time to get your blog listed in these services and then routinely ping them (if necessary) every time you update. The effort will pay off in increased traffic to your blog.