I am trying to optimize a dynamic news website. I have been wondering are there any fundamental differences in the way you optimize a static website and a dynamic website?
Not really. About the only difference you can make is to ensure that any dynamic URLs don't contain session hashes or anything weird like that. If you want to go one step further (and this is a minor factor at best), you can use a custom 404 or some other form of URL rewriting to ensure that the URLs read like static URLs.
The big thing is to make the site useful to users. If you do that, most of the SEO is taken care of.
