How do I submit to Search Engines?

I hope someone could please help me get started with how to submit my sites to the search engines.
I do have "URL friendly" categories and products on my site, and do have the meta keywords, keywords in the descriptions, etc, set up (to a point), but do not really know how I go about submitting my site to the major search engines.

I know that many search engines require that you create a "sitemap" and upload it to the server. Is it the same with Opencart? Is that all I need to do? Should I be using an 'module' ?

Any suggestions to get me started would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you in advance.

I currently use Attracta (https://www.attracta.com) its free and they submit to all major sites for you, also checks to see if you are google blacklisted, they also offer other paid services.

Hope this helps.