One of Willard Mitt Romney's problems is that his effective tax rate is so darn low (estimated at just 14% on millions in annual income).
Maybe this community can determine which article is (currently) best positioned on this important issue so that we can help increase its prominence in internet searches.
I am soliciting suggestions today, and then Sunday I'll post a poll listing the articles that received the most recommends from this diary (and then I'll review some helpful tips on what to do once you have an article you like).
Over the jump, I'm copying some guidelines for selecting articles.
These were posted on DailyKos by Chris Bowers, when we did this for the 2010 elections.
1. Title damaging in and of itself. Not many people who see the article will actually click through and read it. So, it is critically important that the title itself is damaging to the Republican candidate in some way.
2. Name of candidate in title. In addition to a catchy title, it is key that the name of the candidate appear in the title itself. This will both help the [search engine optimization] SEO effort, and lead to more people clicking through to the article.
3. From a well-known, non-partisan news source. Time and time again, people have sent me links to progressive blog articles to use in these SEO campaigns. Don't do that. Just don't. Find negative articles from as high profile a news organization as possible. When high profile can't be found, then local news outlets will do just fine. Whatever you find, make sure said new organization at least ostensibly claims to be non-partisan.
4. Already has a high Google ranking. Increasing the visibility of the article will be a lot easier if the article already has a decent Google ranking. For our purposes, top 100 is OK, and top 50 is good. Something already in the top 20, or even the top 10, would be awesome. (Note: make sure you sign out of Google before conducting keyword searches on the candidate's full name to test the Google ranking of the article).
5. Name of candidate in URL. The SEO effort will be greatly enhanced if the name of the candidate appears in the URL of the article.
6. Keep it short. Try to find shorter articles with the negative hit on the candidate near the top. We don't want to make people struggle to find the info.
7. Keep it recent. This is the least important criteria, and may actually damage SEO efforts on search engines like Bing. But, Google seems to favor more recent articles, and people looking for candidate information probably do, too. So, try to find as recent an article as possible, given the other criteria.
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If you suggest an article, it may be helpful to say why it is a strong choice. Then the community can also help out by commenting on the strengths and weaknesses of the article. (In the follow up diary, I can link to the suggestions or maybe summarize them, before presenting the poll).
I decided to do this because when I search for "Romney's effective tax rate", the first results are from TPM. While I love that website, I think that a non-partisan website (point #3 above) should be among the first results.