Firstly you need to have unique content in your site along with good on page optimization. And then do Social Bookmarking, Forum Posting, Classified ads.
I think submit the link on a obsolete directories, blog commenting and guest posting on the spam blogs and submit the article on the thousands of site are not helpful for the seo. We have to move on the quality submission.
Good meta tag
content of yours website should be unique
article submission
blog submission
forum posting and
SMO is the best option to increase website popularity..
you can also hire experts from SEOclerks.