Dropping the Ball

Hold Back the Hordes for 4 More Years
Any sensible American has one real choice--George Bush.
by Murray N. Rothbard
As often happens, my current quandary was put best by my old friend, Prof. Ralph Raico. He was an ardent Buchananite, but as the horrible nomination of "Slick Willie" loomed, he began to admonish me, in his hilarious mocking half-serious tone: "Remember Murray, we must do nothing to harm the President." When the Perot phenomenon hit, Raico, for some unaccountable reason, failed to share my enthusiasm for the little punk from East Texas. After the Great Betrayal, I was ranting and raving over the phone to Raico, who took it all in, and then concluded: "I'm glad to see you're working your way back to the President."

Yes, gulp, I'm down to the grim, realistic choice: Which of two sets of bozos is going to rule us in 1993-1997?

No one has been more critical of George Bush than I, but yes, dammit, I am working my way back to the President. What? "Four More Years?" Yes, there is only one rational answer for the conservative, the libertarian, or indeed any sensible American.

In Bush's favor:

--First and foremost, Bush ain't Clinton.

--Bush has kept his cool and not gotten American troops or even airmen in a shooting war in the former Yugoslavia. The poor Bosnian Muslims claim that all the United States need do is bomb Serbian gun emplacements around Sarajevo. Rubbish. Objective military experts say that it would take a 500,000-man expeditionary force to secure Bosnia and Sarajevo, and God knows how many more to roll back the Serbs. America, keep out of Bosnia!

[Note: Remember Donald Trump's recent comments on NATO.]
--Bush has the most even-handed Middle East policy since Jack Kennedy. The most credit, of course, goes to Secretary of State James A. Baker III, who formulated this policy and maintained it under vicious pressure. But Bush deserves credit for picking Baker and backing him up. With only a little stretching, Bush/Baker can even take credit for the Israeli election that got rid of Yitzhak Shamir.

--Last but certainly not least: The President is about to reconcile with Pat Buchanan. At last, Bush has shown some smarts, and perhaps even a spark of a sense of justice. After a vicious and despicable smear campaign by Rich Bond, William Bennett, Dan Quayle et al., the Bush people--while of course not apologizing--are at least implicitly repudiating their own smears by rolling out the welcome mat for Buchanan. Which brings us to the ghastly specter of Clintonian Democracy.

Against Clinton:

--Clinton as Southern moderate is the Big Lie of the 1992 campaign. He is a McGovernite. When he says "investment," he means government spending.

--The Clinton-managed Democratic convention was the most leftist ever: multiculturalism reigned triumphant, with "Lesbian Rights" banners almost as prevalent as "Clinton for President." Clinton means the triumph of ultrafeminism, trillions more of our dough for inner cities and the aggrandizement of phony "rights" over the genuine rights of private property.

--Al Gore was one of the biggest spenders in the wild-spending recent Congress. Gore, furthermore, is an extreme-left environmentalist, and he shores up Clinton's left flank on this issue.

--Never forget the menace of Hillary Clinton. Sure, they cleaned up her act until November; they shut her up, bobbed and blonded her hair and took that damned headband off, and made her look like a sophisticated matron instead of an aging grad student. But if Clinton wins in November, Hillary will be back: in control, nasty, tough and very leftist.

Mom and Dad: Hillary Is Out to Grab Your Kids! Hillary is the prophet of the children's "rights" movement, a movement that encourages 11-year-olds to sue their parents for "malpractice," and you know who will really be doing the suing: leftist ACLU-type lawyers in the mold of Hillary.

There is a lot of confused discussion about family values and what they mean. Well, there's one clear test: Family values means that kids get governed by their parents. Anti-family values means that other folk--bureaucrats, lawyers, social workers and "therapists," the rapacious, power-hungry, leftist New Class--get to run everyone's kids in the name of children's "rights" and "liberation."

A vote for Bill Clinton is a vote to destroy the last vestige of parental control and responsibility in America. A victory for Bush will--at least partly--hold back the hordes for another four years. Of course, that is not exactly soul-satisfying. What would be soul-satisfying would be taking the offensive at long last, launching a counter-revolution in government, in the economy, in the culture, everywhere against malignant left-liberalism. When oh when do we get to start?

3 Ways to Boost Your Local SEO
Over the last few years, Google has been delivering more localized search results. That’s a good thing for local businesses because it gives them a chance to actually show up in the search results. In the past, local businesses struggled for a spot on Google’s first page; now they have their own section!

So what is it that actually helps a business rank higher in the local search results? There are 3 ways to boost your Local SEO: citations, reviews, and schema.

1) Local Citations

Many people view these as directories, but they’re mistaken. A local citation is anywhere you list your business name, address, phone number, and maybe your website, along with pictures and a description of your business.

You don’t want to fire out your business information at any website that accepts it. The major sites to cite your business include Google+, Bing, Yahoo, Yelp, YellowPages, CitySearch, Factual, DexKnows, Acxiom, and Infogroup. There are more, but those are the major ones you should stick with initially.

It’s important when listing your business to have a consistent NAP, which is name, address, and phone number. Don’t fret over every little thing like ‘St.’ and ‘Street’. Google is smart enough to know they mean the same thing. What you don’t want is two different phone numbers, different addresses, or a totally different business name.

2) Reviews

Your business is awesome, so people are going to leave you awesome reviews, right? Let’s hope so because reviews are a big factor when it comes to ranking your local business in the search engines. There are a few things you should know about getting reviews.

Google+ is the main place to get reviews. After all, Google is who displays the search results, right? Don’t stick solely to Google though. Google finds other places you get reviews, and you’re able to see this on your Google+ page. The next most important place is Yelp. Yelp can be an awesome traffic driver to your website, aside from the local SEO benefits of having great reviews on there.

The speed you get reviews is taken into account as well. If you are getting decent reviews on a constant basis, Google knows and Google rewards this. If you get one review this month, 10 reviews the next months, and no reviews the next month, that’s going to look odd. Make the customer experience so awesome that people seek out a place to leave you reviews.

If your customers don’t know where they can leave a review for your business, encourage them with handouts at your place of business or have a Yelp badge on your website. People want to talk about your business, but sometimes it feels like work looking for a place to leave a review. Make it easy for them.

3) Schema

Implementing Schema on your website is a way of placing certain code on your website so that it will communicate better with the search engines. There are many different types of Schema, but we’re going to focus on local businesses.

Things you can include in your Schema code are name, description, address, city, state, zip code, phone number, email address, and a Google map. I’m not going to get in the technicalities of it but just know that it works!

Local SEO is becoming more prevalent, and many business are already adopting the above practices, so don’t get left behind sucking your thumb. As I said, there are hundreds of factors when it comes to how your website ranks locally, but hopefully you can take these three steps and gain some traction.

...Note: Check out the original article, at the Fidelitas Development blog.

4 Tips on Improving Local SEO
When most marketers discuss SEO, they focus on broader link building campaigns and detailed on-page SEO strategies. But for most brick-and-mortar businesses, local SEO strategies are a critical component for any internet marketing campaign. Many searches for local businesses and brands include the geographic area, and sites like Yelp can be optimized to increase impressions and exposure to prospective customers. Here are four local SEO tips and tricks to help improve your site’s rankings in local search:

1) Make sure your online listings are consistent.

The devil is in the details. Businesses that are truly optimized for local search have the same name, address, website, and phone number on each and every local directory, from Yelp and Yellowpages.com to directory submission sites like Localeze.

2) Leverage social media.

Make sure that your business’s information is listed correctly on each social profile. Further, continue to engage your customers with compelling content and promotions in order to appear higher in the search rankings by attracting more fans and followers. One Fidelitas client has been so successful at this that their Facebook page actually ranks first in most local searches for their targeted keywords.

3) Build a local Public Relations campaign.

Take advantage of local PR opportunities to generate credible links in addition to immediate buzz. Restaurants targeting foodie blogs and Realtors targeting local publications with quality content and actual news are two examples of PR opportunities for smaller businesses.

4) Optimize your own site.

Too many businesses overlook an easy opportunity to take local SEO into their own hands by optimizing their website. One problem with many website designers is that while they are capable of building a nice looking website, they often prove to be inept when it comes to on-page SEO. Besides tweaking copy to include as many local references as possible, businesses should incorporate local search phrases into their ALT tags and page titles. Finally, be sure that the contact information listed on the site matches what has been submitted to local directories and social media pages.