Digital Content Marketing Blog

We talk with a number of Private Equity firms each month and the one thing that comes up about 50% of the time in our conversations is “Should their firm being doing SEO?” and “Does SEO even work for Private Equity?”

The other half believe that SEO for Private Equity works but needs to better understand how so they move forward on getting the results they need it to produce.

Here we explore how your firm can increase exposure, acquire new investors, increase deal flow and attract talent to your firm all using SEO tactics specific to the Private Equity space.

Does SEO Work for Private Equity Firms

Yes. Private Equity firms are actually in a position to capitalize on SEO better than many other industries. The reason being that the majority of firms aren’t actually doing it. Many firms just don’t think about it or they don’t think it’s necessary, but this is old school thinking that you see across a lot of industries (manufacturing as an example) that hang on to only the tactics of the past and keep out any of the new methods to market and attract investors, deals or talent.

The basic logic of how SEO works alone makes sense for all firms to be doing it. If someone searches for your firm, searches generically for a private equity firm or searches for a private equity firm specializing in a specific industry you would want your firm to show up.

Some would argue that no one is searching for private equity firms online but that is simply untrue.

Take a look at the Keyword Chart below that shows almost 10,000 searches per month for Private Equity Firms, 720 searches per month for Dallas Private Equity Firms, 2,900 searches per month for Providence Equity Partners and 90 searches per month for Private Equity Firms Energy.

This example shows that people are searching for firms in different ways, in specific areas and in specific verticals.  So Yes, SEO does work for Private Equity firms.

Build Awareness for Your Private Equity Firm Using SEO

By implementing an SEO Strategy for your Private Equity firm it will immediately bring you new visibility that you previously did not have. Image showing up in the search engines for a variety of different searches with different intents. This exposure is building awareness for your firms brand that otherwise wouldn’t have been gained.

This result is a longer term, brand building benefit but it comes regardless of your primary objective. We speak about it as a positive byproduct of doing the SEO work.

SEO Strategy for Private Equity Firms

Something that is grossly overlooked by most agencies who say they do SEO is mapping the SEO Strategy to the firms goals and targets. What you’ll find much of the time are agencies showing you how many times the term Private Equity is searched on Google, but the problem with that is it isn’t focused.

Your firm is involved in acquiring investment, raising capital, and deal origination. So the SEO strategy is going to focus on content that speaks to the questions potential investors or target business owners are searching that relate to your firm.

For example: Investors might be searching for a specialized private equity firm OR a new investor might be searching for a way to diversity their investment portfolio in something other than securities or bonds. For the latter you would do keyword research on and optimize for answering that exact question.

Another Example: A business owner may be searching for alternative financing options to purchase new equipment so they can expand production. Your firm could do keyword research and optimize an article on doing exactly that but using your private equity firm as a way to capitalize the business.

Thinking about what your target investors, partners, owners or new hires are asking will give you the foundation for creating an SEO rich content strategy for your private equity firm.

SEO Tactics for Private Equity Firms

Again this is where most agencies go to immediately when talking about SEO to firms like yours. The problem is this is the part you care about least. You want results. Results like acquiring new investors, increasing deal flow and recruiting top financial talent.

But the reality is that these tactics must be executed (and we at Acumen Studio do this very well), so we’ll briefly share with you the things that need done to ensure you are technically and strategically optimized for the search engines to get visibility, build awareness, build authority, generate traffic, leads and close more of everything.

Develop Your SEO Strategy

We talked about this earlier in the article, but you need to start here. Do this first! Define your targets and create content based on their needs and how you meet those needs.

Do Keyword Research

This is done once you’ve defined your targets to ensure the Keyword Research is being done from the correct perspective. Without the right target or intent while doing this research you’ll end up with an unfocused set of results.

Technical SEO

This the implementation of SEO tactics that include things like optimizing your firms Title Tags, Meta Descriptions, H1 tags, increasing page speed, creating a sitemap, etc.

On-Site SEO

This the implementation of updates to the copy on your site to include keywords, complimentary keywords that support the primary keywords, as well as adding elements related to conversion optimization such as submission forms, click to call phone numbers, etc.

Off-Site SEO

This the implementation of tactics that are not done to your website directly. Most commonly this is optimizing your Google My Business listing and then doing other tasks such as getting your firm listed on directories, backlinking, running PR campaigns to get off-site exposure, etc.

*At Acumen Studio we don’t run PR campaigns, do backlinking or directory listing. We encourage the firms we work with to do this, but PR is a completely different skill set and backlinking being done by an outside agency has an imbalanced ROI

Doing all of these SEO related tasks for your Private Equity firm are guaranteed to generate more attention from investors, increase your deal flow and allow you to be found more often by new hires looking to join a firm.

If You Are Looking to Close New Investors, More Deals or Have Questions, Call Us at 866-357-7422

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