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Today we're at the 2nd BrightonSEO of 2012, blogging on all the topics that interest us!

First up we had a great talk from Dave Trott, but not before an opening video from Professor Puppet followed by a dancing Panda and Penguin (Kelvin was the penguin). Here's a picture of Kelvin - Post Penguin.

I'll admit that we were dreading the day being about link building, keywords and lots of boring SEO stuff that doesn't really mean anything anymore.

Instead, Dave Trott of CSTTG set the tone for the morning sessions - SEOs need to start learning from marketers and from other disciplines. Stop the silos, stop the SEO church (term used by Anthony Mayfield in the second talk) and start thinking about consumers, brand, business and taking tips from marketing tactics that have worked long before search engines existed.

Funnily enough, Dave only learned what SEO was 5 minutes before he was due to speak, thinking it was the name of an organisation! But as he said, SEO is about beating your competitors, just like any other business.

“Whatever you do, you need to stand out."

The focus of Dave Trott's talk was how to separate ourselves from our competitors so you stand out from the crowd and don't get ignored.

Creativity

Creativity is the new buzzword – from creative thinking to creative football managers. But does anybody know what it actually means?

Dave Trott - BrightonSEO

Pure creativity and applied creativity are different. Pure creativity is what you find in art galleries: it doesn't do anything, but takes you forward in your thinking.

Then along come designers/ media who take that pure creativity and turn it into applied creativity. This is the wrong way round, and marketers should instead adopt the Bauhaus method of form over function.