About Us
We are a search marketing training consultancy based in Melbourne, Australia and with a presence in Boston, MA, USA. Our clients are world-wide. We initially offered retail SEO services during 2002–2005, but since 2007 we have focussed exclusively on training and consulting. We have just added social media outsourcing to this mix.
Our corporate consulting is advisory in nature, so we often work with incumbent digital agencies and client staff who perform the work. Some of our work involves being embedded in the client’s workplace, as this gives us a first-hand view of workflows and corporate processes. Our solutions involve making small tweaks to processes in disparate teams; their collective synergy delivers the results.
Our consulting to SEO and digital agencies is possible because we do not compete with them.
Search marketing, particularly SEO and social media, has evolved rapidly in the past year or two and most of the old tactics don’t work as well or at all. What works now isn’t surprising or complicated — it can be summarised as “creating quality content”. It’s a no-brainer that users like sites that offer something of value, so they respond favourably.
We call this Value Creation. We can’t help you to build better or cheaper widgets, but we can help you to create valuable content on your website. This content has to be arranged within a meaningful architectural blueprint.
Our People
Ash Nallawalla, CEO
Ash is experienced in large-scale, complex SEO projects as well as small sites since 1995 at companies such as National Australia Bank, UBank, Sensis, Telstra, Melbourne IT and other well-known and lesser-known companies.
He is a certified Google Advertising Professional and has managed PPC campaigns with budgets in the seven figures. He moderates the Local Search forum at Webmasterworld.com and speaks at PubCon and other events. He writes for PC Update and APC magazine and has written for several well-known publications over the years.
He has a traditional product marketing background with high-tech companies such as Tennyson Technologies, Selectica, Macromedia, Hayes and Unisys.
Ash served as an officer in the Royal Australian Air Force and is now a reservist.
He maintains an infrequent blog post schedule at Net Magellan, where he comments on the search industry from an Australian perspective.
Ted Ulle, President, TrainSEM North America
Ted Ulle (tedster) is an SEO pioneer based in Boston, MA. He entered into the emerging discipline in 1996 on a foundation of twenty years as a turn-around specialist in retail marketing.
Ted has worked his SEO magic with hundreds of web businesses in both B2B and B2C markets. In 2004 he became the Senior Search Analyst for the Manhattan based agency, Converseon. In that role he has worked with dozens of Converseon’s enterprise-level and Fortune 500 clients.
Since 2000 Ted has also served as an administrator for Webmaster World, one of the foremost online forums for organic SEO where he moderates the Google SEO forum. He is also a senior editor for Search Engine Marketing Journal, the only peer-reviewed, academic publication for the search marketing industry.
His strong track record and communication skills make him a welcome speaker at industry conferences, including PubCon, ePharma, and the elite SEOClass.
Training
We offer training classes in the following subjects:
- Search engine optimisation (SEO) (also available online)
- Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
- Social media optimisation (SMO)
- Social media marketing (SMM)
- Online reputation management (ORM)
Consulting
We consult in all the above areas. Examples of our assignments include:
- SEO and PPC audit
- Search marketing strategy
- PPC (SEM) strategy
- Usage growth strategy
- Social media strategy
- Social media policy and governance
- Value creation strategy
- Writing technical (website) requirements for an infrastructure transformation program
- Non-functional testing of SEO features (in enterprise programs)
Social Media Outsourcing
Our Twemps brand covers our social media outsourcing services.