Competing with other web sites will only help you hone your skills for the big battle, which is competing with other books. Getting listed in search engines is easy. This will bring you to a submissions page where you type in the address of your new web page. Take note of any search engine you visit so you can return in two weeks to see if they listed you and resubmit if they didn't. Repeat as needed.
Directories take a little more thought and persistence.
You need to carefully choose which category you want to be listed in, and again, the best way to do this is to pretend you are a potential reader looking for whatever it is you write about. Directory entries are handled by human beings rather than automated software, so only a small number of submissions are ever actually looked at. A link is essentially an address holder that shows up in most browsers as an underlined word or phrase. You find another site with content related to your own site, and the two of you negotiate an exchange of links via e-mail. When a visitor to your site clicks on a link you have made to another site, they're gone.