Website & SEO

In this chapter, we run through ideal website setup and ensure search engine optimisation (SEO) basics are in place.

Investor type & location

A website visitor’s first online encounter with a B2B investment manager is usually being forced to select an investor type and/or location before they can access any content on the website. This comes from financial regulation around marketing investment products — to prevent retail investors accessing content deemed too complicated or products being shown in regions where they aren’t available.

While it can sometimes be a rather blunt and off-putting experience — and should therefore be made as seamless as possible — it means the marketing team can define what content is shown to various audience segments up-front (even in cases where it might not be a regulatory requirement, such as showing relevant sales contacts).

A visitor’s selections are often stored as a JavaScript variable and a cookie set on their browser so they don’t have to reselect them each time they visit.

Obviously, visitors can lie — as their selections can’t be verified — and so lengthy disclaimers are usually added that must be accepted before content can be viewed.

Investor type

For investor type, the simplest option is to distinguish between professional and non-professional (or retail) investors. This lets members of the general public apply for jobs and access high-level information about the firm, while giving professional investors access to all content — strategies, products, thought leadership — and allowing them to subscribe to topics of interest.

Some firms split the professional investor choice further into the two main client groups — institutional and intermediary. This would make sense if there was enough difference in content produced for each segment to justify the distinction — for example, if an investment manager creates specific content for advisors to use with their retail-clients — but is sometimes put in place anyway, simply for familiarity reasons.