That is a very general question so I'll have to give a very general answer.
Make sure you have clean, semantic code and that you organise your page titles and headings carefully to ensure maximum SEO results. Ensure that your content is original and of high quality to make sure you get as many backlinks and return visitors as possible. And last but not least, keep adding original content regularly.
For news sites in particular, it is imperative that the news makes it's way to your site as soon as it becomes available, as the search engines may notice this and send traffic your direction in preference to other sources.
Also, many news sites purchase or borrow content from larger news sites. This is a sure fire way to never reach the top of the pile as visitors may notice this and search engines will inflict duplicate content penalties accordingly.
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