Question : Search Engine Optimization required for travel website

Dear Experts

I need help  as im not a web developer. I have got a website developed which is for worldwide online hotel booking at cheap price with comparison from many other hotel provider & i want to be on 1st page of every search engine with the keywords like "hotel booking" or "hotels" etc etc or you can say two letter words. So i would request all you experts to kindly help me in getting traffic without spending much funds coz I don't have the funds to pay someone thousands of dollars. Yes Once I make some money then definately i can think of paid listing on search engines to get more business
Please help what would be the next step in marketing?
How to write good content
how to use good title, Tag etc etc to promote a website.
How much time it will take to come on google or yahoo.?
Please tell me some better ways to be on top?

Thanx & regards

Answer : Search Engine Optimization required for travel website

WOW, that is a pretty tall order.  Let me point you in some directions to get you started...

Read these articles from SEOmoz.org
http://www.seomoz.org/article/beginners-1-page
http://www.seomoz.org/article/link-building-guide
http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-friendly-guide
http://www.seomoz.org/article/keyword-research-guide

There are a lot of sites and forums out there where you can learn a considerable amount of information, but I personally like SEOmoz.org and the folks that run their site.  You may even want to consider getting a Premium Subscription there because they also have a lot of resources and tools that are very useful to you as a member.

Ultimately, the game of SEO is pretty straight forward.   Those that are good at it are those that use a disciplined approach to SEO where they are keeping up with the latest trends, updating their sites with basic elements, getting inbound links, etc.  You will learn about most of these from the articles mentioned above.  

To answer some of your questions... here goes:

What would be the next step in marketing?
I would say your next step is to become knowledgeable about the SEO world.  In addition to the articles listed above, there are tons of blogs and forums that you should keep pace with.  Here are a couple:

Official:
=========
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/
http://blogs.msdn.com/livesearch/
http://www.ysearchblog.com/

SEO related:
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http://searchengineland.com/
http://sphinn.com/
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/
http://www.seroundtable.com/
http://www.seomoz.org/blog.php
http://www.seobook.com/blog

How to write good content
Writing good content is not easy.  You need it to be unique and engaging and filled with keywords that the search engines will find and index and cause your site to rank well for those terms.  Unfortunately, there are no simple steps to writing good content.  The basic rule is, if it is interesting, people will read it.  Usually content that is compelling, opinionated, current, knowledgeable, etc will get recognized.  The more you display that you have a unique message and show yourself to be a valuable voice in your field, the more people will read and link to your content.

How to use good title, Tag etc etc to promote a website?
Well, you are going to make sure that you use your title tag, meta description and meta keyword tags on every page.  Also, you want to consider putting headers as an H1 tag and any sub-headers as H2 tags.  Your tags should be unique and relevant to the page and should try to be optimized for the keywords that you want people to find your page with.  Again, no magic answer here, but the more it relates to the content on your page, the better.

How much time it will take to come on google or yahoo?
This depends.  If you submit your site to the search engines through the appropriate means, listed below, then you could see them pretty soon.  Some people say that there is a waiting period that can last as long as 4 to 6 months, but I have seen results within a week.  I would say that you should see your site indexed withing a couple weeks with Google, and probably within a month for Yahoo.

Google: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34397
Yahoo: http://submit.search.yahoo.com/
MSN: http://search.live.com/docs/submit.aspx

Please tell me some better ways to be on top?
Unfortunately, you are in a HUGELY competitive market.  This means that your chances of getting on top are going to be very small initially.  You are going to need to build a relevant site that is optimized for your keywords and you are going to need to get LOTS of inbound links from high ranking sites.  Becasue of this fact, you may want to consider paying for ads through services like Google Adwords.  Because these are pay-per-click, not only can you manage exactly how much you are paying, but you can go straight to the top, if you desire, because it is on a highest-bidder-wins scale.  Check out http://adwords.google.com/select/Login for more info.

The bottom line here is that you are not in for an easy fix.  With long-term discipline and a steady approach to SEO, you could end up doing fine.  But, with the industry you are in, ranking well is going to be difficult, so don't be discouraged if your results are not perfect to start out with.  You need to make sure that your site is getting blogged about and has articles written about it and that those blogs/articles link directly to your site.  You are also going to want to consider non-SEO marketing techniques.  Maybe develop some applications that work with various sites that people can use to check travel information from their social networks that they belong to.  

I could go on for days as this is an ever-changing, ever-expanding discipline that you can learn 80% in about 1 month and then spend the rest of your life trying to get to 100%.  But, if you commit to being disciplined and you have something unique to bring to the table, you might just be able to make a killing!  

Hope this helps.