Local Biz Portal Website

Hello BHW,

I have developed a city portal for my city.The website is having so many sections like, from Business listing to local news, Movie reviews, Tech, Automotive sections everything.

My questions:
What all i need to keep in mind before starting optimizing the website.
As it is also having a news section, we will be posting unique quality content on my site. So i think it will help me get news authority on google. Anything i need to keep in mind before making the site live?

If anyone is have similar type of websites please suggest me good SEO habits. And how i can monetize this kind of website (City Portal) to make money.

Thanks

Sell listings and ads to local businesses. Setup a section of the site where local people can post classified ads to the site but they must register and verify their email address to do so, this way you can sell email blasts to local businesses.

As for the news sections, just post a few sentences of unique content about each article then a portion of it and link to the original and you should be fine.

As for unique content generation, allow comments (FB's comment plugin) and allow users to submit opinion pieces.

SEO wise what all i need to do to get high rankings?