Most important thing: Produce quality content. Without this, none of these SEO tactics matters.

Headlines: The most important item to search engines
* Write headlines with a literal just-the-facts approach, keeping news in mind.
* Avoid, pithy, poetic, punny, rhyming and all-capital headlines.
* Use the most important words first (Who, what is it about? Or, think of it as people, places, events/shows, hot subjects, organizations).
* Focus on three of the big W’s — who, what, where.
* Load with keywords you would think of to search for a story. (Simple research of keywords on Google News dropdown suggestions.)
* Use terms real people use (it’s a heart attack, not a coronary).
* Include the most important locations, full names, organizations, events and subjects.
* Make 5 to 12 words long (never longer than 21 words).
* Avoid specific days or dates in headlines.
* Use numerals (9) instead of spelled-out figures (nine).
* Avoid acronyms and abbreviations.
* If a big part of the post is a poll, video, photo add that at the end of the headline (“Blazers consider trade Chris Bosh (poll)”).
* Never duplicate an AP headline; write a new headline.
* If your headline has a source, add it to the end of the headline.
* Ask yourself: Does the headline alone tell the reader what the story’s words convey?
* Never change a headline unless it is factually wrong or has a misspelling.

Body copy: Be complete and use full names, descriptions
* Include the keywords people would search for high in stories. Inverted pyramid works here, too.
* Include location (city, state) at the top of your story in the body copy.
* Make sure to include full names (schools, organizations, people, etc.) high in stories.
* Consider bolded paragraph lead-ins or subheads that include keywords. Search engines like bold type and it helps the reader.
* Stories must be at least 80 words long to be indexed by Google News. Stories of 250-800 words have the best chance of being indexed across the search engine universe (Don’t consider this a reason to not post a story).
* Avoid one-sentence paragraphs when you can.
* Make links internal and contextual (see “Links”, below).

Excerpt: A deck or summary headline
* Write an excerpt that captures all sides of the story. Keep it to fewer than 60 words — about three healthy sentences. Do not duplicate from the story.

Links: Search engines give points to stories that link and are linked
* Use links within your story to send readers to links inside or outside OregonLive (give preference to our content — example: use gov.oregonlive.com links for all statewide politicians and measures). A general goal is to create two internal (to OregonLive content) links in every story.
* Contextual links within stories should use keywords sets not single words (“Intel’s quarterly report”, instead of just “report” for the linking item).
* Avoid the “here”, “click here” or “more” setups for links.

Contextual tags: How would you search for a story?
* Only use three to five contextual tags on a story.
* Add tags — separated by commas — describing the most important subject of your post.
* Use lowercase. It prevents capitalization inconsistency.
* Tag words should consist of peoples’ names (without titles or initials), locations, organizations, event names, story subject.
* Be consistent in your tagging.
* Be succinct: Pick two- to three-word phrases.
* Use plural terms — use singular only when absolutely necessary.
* Use nouns.
* Limit abbreviations unless universally recognized.
* Add year to events, if they occur annually (super bowl 2012, rose festival 2012).
* Don’t repeat directional tags in contextual tags. (If the story needs a @beaverton tag, don’t also add a tag of beaverton.)
* Don’t use generic tags (fire, police, weather, etc.).

Photos: Search engines and readers are drawn in by photos
* Use all photos at the top of the post. Publish as large and left, except mugshots (make those small and left). Click the box that allows viewers to see the full-sized version of the photo.
* Write captions to include keywords, like you would a headline or news lede.
* Keep captions short (5 to 10 words).
* Rename photos before uploading with a descriptive, keyword-heavy name (If it’s something recurring, add a date. Examples: blazers against jazz january 6 2011; nike headquarters. The same holds true for PDFs. Do not use a name that is flip, disrespectful or general — these names travel with photos onto the Web.)
* Include tags when you load a photo (just like you would a story).

New story or update?: As news changes, what are the rules for updating a story.
* Never change a headline unless it is factually wrong or has a misspelling.
* Update stories with minor changes, added details.
* Create a new post if your information would cause you to change the original post’s headline.
* Add a link at the bottom of the original post to the new story.
* Create a new story if you have a more contextual story ready to publish. Make sure the headline captures the story’s more complete nature.
* Do not use the word “update” in a headline.