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Is there actually a published article with statistics that state that more followers/fans give you higher ranking in SERPs?

You would probably need more information than just looking at the client side. The only way that could work out is if the file extensions were .aspx or .php or something like that.

Essentially what i was getting to, is you would set the redirect differently depending on what type of hosting you are using. If it was microsoft base you would set it in IIS, while if it was linux based you would added it to your root .htacess file.

Hope that helped!

Sounds like a pretty good return, $1 per fan. Especially if the were truely engaged fans, rather than the fictious fans that it sounds like you could get from these purchasing sites. Thanks for the info!

What type of hosting/server do you have linux based or microsoft?

Have you seen a good response with facebook ads? If you don't mind me asking, what is your average cpc and ctr?

This client is a two man startup that truly has no knowledge of inbound marketing. He first came to me with the facebook fan link and i explained to him these wouldn't be targeted and probably fictitious accounts.

A week later he sends me the twitter link and asked the same question, "If i get 40,000 followers if only 20 of them convert i would cover cost."

So after his determination i figured i shoot the question out to the inbound marketing community that i have grown to trust, and to no surprise they have all agreed. It sounds like i should tell him to invest in facebook ads rather than fake facebook friends

So i have a client that sends me a link once a week about buying followers for social media profiles. Each time i tell him if it seems to good to be true... then its too good to be true!

What are your guys thoughts, experiences, feelings?

Here are a few examples:

http://www.targetedtraffic.int.tc

http://www.fbfandamonium.com

FYI - http://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/372859-trifecta-is-mostly-broken

The same thing is happening for one of my campaigns, specifically for a 302 redirect to the homepage. My guess is I need to update it to a 301, but I'm not 100% sure if that would solve the issue?

I would highly suggest using CPM (cost per thousand impression) pricing structure for your content network campaigns. You can get a lot more bang for your buck than paying per click.

For example lets assume you get 1000 impressions with only a 3% CTR. This means you have around 30 clicks for $0.45 a piece, which means your total cost is $13.50.

If you would have instead setup your campaign to bid $1.50 per/thousand impressions you could have saved $12 dollars. Then taking it another step further, what if you have a CTR of 5%? you still only pay the $1.50 even though you are receiving more clicks.

As you can tell these are just made up figures and I understand each case is different, but i would definitely suggest looking into it.  From my experience i have never paid more than $1.50 per thousand impressions (and that was for the keyword "stimulus reimbursement" during the health care reform bill craziness).

I fully understand that the 301 is the best option, i was interested if it had been published anywhere that meta-refreshes could pass any value or not?

I did some searching around and couldn't find any trust worthy articles. They only thing i found was that it wasn't suggested by SEOMoz and the W3C doesn't support it...

Quick question, can Googlebot (or other search engines) follow meta refresh tags? Does it work anything like a 301 in terms of passing value to the new page?

In the past i have seen conanicals take up to 5-6 weeks. My only other advice is to monitor the amount of indexed queries you have in Google. If you know you started with 100+ and over the past three weeks it has dropped down to 50, then it is slowly taking affect (once again, using the site search). If you see the opposite and you notice no change, then perhaps the tag is still incorrect or some other issue?

I can't promise that all of the queried URLs will become un-indexed but the most important thing is the base page ranks the highest when searching.

First i would check to see if the update you made to the pages have been recognized by Google. You can do this simply by doing a "site:www.domain.com" search, then view the cached page. If you find that it has not been recognized, you can always resubmit a new xml sitemap to your webmaster tools. In the past i have seen this help speed up the process.

How long ago did you make these updates?

Along with the current crawl notices (canonical links, 301s, etc) you should add "meta refresh". Those are tricky to catch via the human eye unless you are paying very close attention and they definitely effect your SEO if not done properly.

Thoughts?

Were you previously being penalized on these sites? For instance, did you have a good rank for your selected keywords then randomly drop off the first three SERPs? Or are you just trying to take steps to not be penalized?

The drop in organic traffic for your partner's sites is directly related to the canonical links. Before i can give advice on how to solve the problem i first need to know, what is the reason for the duplicate content?

I've always had a great experience with 99designs but you want to make sure you give a lot of requirements and inspiration if you want to get exactly what your looking for. I've only used them for logo work though so i can't give much feedback for other types of projects. What are your price points?

You could always check for colleges around your location that offer interns/co-ops for college credit. Normally there is good design talent with relatively affordable prices.

Hopefully we get some feedback from an SEOMoz staff. It would just be good to know for future analysis.