It’s Day 2 here at Search Engine Strategies Toronto.

Here are some of the highlights from the sessions today:

Information Architecture for the Modern Website with @BrentDPayne

Subdomain or Subfolder?
- If you have a lot of content that’s not related to the core of your website, use a subdomain

Expired Content
- Challenges: time sensitive content, discontinued product line, changing news facts
- Opportunities: PageRank consolidation, up selling/cross-selling, news one-box refresh
- Repurpose expired content to breathe new life into your website and help your rankings
- Or redirect expired content to relevant pages on your site to consolidate your PageRank

Canonical Tags
- Tell Google the version of the duplicate content they should show in search results
- It passes PageRank to the original source
- Remember the versions need to be very similar

Google will continue to look at the user signals to determine rankings.

One of the biggest ranking factors for ranking mobiles sites is the page weight / load time.

Google changes its mind all the time.

Black Hat
- Twitter link profile goes to Google search to get people clicking on your website for important keywords

SEO 2012 – What Still Works with @BrentDPayne and @TerryVanHorne

Response rates and open rates are dropping due to “crap marketing” – Van Horne

Guest blogging will always work, but you need to be careful where you get your links from – Van Horne

Use Link Prospector to find bloggers who are already ranking for the keywords you’re after and connect with them to do guest posts – Van Horne

Any type of major media links still works, anything with high authority that is editorial content (not comments) – Payne

Social media and user interaction signals are also becoming very important ranking factors. They are as important as links – Payne

Too many people have hit the links segment of the algorithm for too long – Payne

Advice for running local directories
- Niche and local directories – yes, general – no – Van Horne
- Don’t put do follow links on directories unless there is value add (ie review) – Van Horne
- Pull value-add information into the directory so it’s not just a simple listing – Payne
- Make the content so valuable that people want to link to your directory content – Payne

Focus on the .com, the other extensions are not ranking anywhere close to the .com versions

The only time you want to buy exact match domain names and try to rank them is if that exact match keyword has a lot of searches for it – Payne

301 redirects don’t pass all the Page Rank like they used to – Payne

Should I outsource my link building overseas?
- My experience has been EXTREMELY bad hiring people from the Phillippines to build links – Van Horne
- If you’re hiring people overseas and they’re building you real links on real websites then it can be valuable – Payne
- Stop faking it and get people to actually do work – Payne

Is reciprocal linking dead?
- Yes, as of 2003 – Van Horne

Mobile sites – Does having one help your SEO?
- Mobile search is eating desktop search’s lunch – Van Horne
- They haven’t figured out how to do PPC effectively on mobile – Van Horne

Do you get link value from commenting on blogs?
- Engage on the blogs first before being self-promotional – Payne
- Start softly, build up a reputation and get known on the blog first, then promote your stuff – Payne
- If you’re doing it for engagement, go for it – if you’re doing it for SEO, forget about it – Van Horne

Should I have one website or multiple domains?
- Focus your energy on one domain so you don’t split your attention and you can make the content really good – Payne
- Having multiple domains also splits up your links and weakens both domains – Van Horne

Should I create a video site map for my YouTube videos and submit to Google?
- Yes – the more data you can give to the search engines about what you want them to see, the better – Payne

Any advice for a new startup?
- Be a markerter, not a scammer – Payne
- It’s not about link bait, it’s about getting people to do something – Payne
- You have to get a lot smarter of becoming a good markerter instead of coming up with schemes to get around the rules – Payne
- The best time to someone as a client is in the startup phase – you can start them off properly – Van Horne
- Clients who have been around for a long time don’t have baggage, they have troubles – Van Horne

Is affiliate marketing dead with Penguin?
- Make sure you’re adding value and not just doing redirects – Payne
- Google doesn’t like resellers – they like the people who are making the products so if you’re reselling or being an affiliate you need to add value – Van Horne

That’s it for SES Toronto 2012! I hope you enjoyed the updates and I’m looking forward to next year!

Stay tuned tomorrow morning for Marija’s final update on the conference.