Typically I've been using Thomas Korte's excellent blog feed submitting page but I think I'm going to be changing my ways thanks to a tip from Diva Marketing--Diva Marketing- Feed Your Blog To The Shark!--I'll be usingFeed Shark.  Pretty straightforward interface.  Enter your feed in step one, then press the relevant buttons in step 2, then paste a little code onto your blog in step three--I think this step is mostly for Feed Shark to track themselves and not your blog as they claim.

 

You might be asking yourself, especially if you're new to blogging, why you'd want to take the step of actually submitting your blog feed to the blog and regular search engines.  Essentially the reason is time.  When you submit your blog feed to these engines, it's like adding your feed to their news aggregator.  So not only do you let the online world know that you've posted something new when the server pings out, but the search engines--like people--will also check periodically (usually nightly).  Functionally this means that people--like me--will have an easier time finding your blog in our searches of the blogosphere.

 

Now, my only criticisms of Feed Shark are that a) the process isn't as automatic as Thomas'--you only have to visit the individual site if there a problem or error with his tool--and b) it lists directories/indices that many blogs wouldn't/shouldn't be listed on--.NET and ASP developer directories, for example.  Beyond those two, I think it's a good step for new blog owners.  One note, some engines don't like Feedburner feed URLs so have your "real" syndication URL handy, just in case.

 

[Also posted on View from the Isle]