NEW YORK, Nov. 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Greenhill SAVP announced today it has invested in New York-based Altruik. Greenhill SAVP co-invested with DFJ Gotham, First Round Capital, Javelin Partners, and Zelkova Ventures on a $4.7 million Series A financing.

Altruik (www.altruik.com) is a pioneer of search engine optimization technology solutions. By automating the most tedious and arduous on-page components of the SEO process, Altruik provides an easy-to-use and cost effective platform to support in-house SEO marketers and consultants seeking to accelerate SEO results with greater scalability.

According to industry reports, spending in the overall search engine marketing industry - which includes spending in search engine optimization and search engine marketing - will increase to over $26 billion by 2013 in North America alone. While most of online search budgets have traditionally been spent on paid search, the majority of traffic comes from natural search.

Greenhill SAVP's investment in Altruik represents the fund's eighth online media and marketing services investment in the past two years.

"We see significant demand from online retailers and content providers to invest in SEO," said Steve Brotman, Managing Director of Greenhill SAVP. "Altruik's team has built an innovative solution that optimizes clients' natural search results in an efficient, cost effective, measurable, and transparent manner."

"Our ability to complete this investment in the current economic environment underscores the potential that we know exists in this nascent area of the Internet," said Eric Gertler, CEO of Altruik. "Given Greenhill SAVP's notable experience in technology-enabled marketing services, we believe they will add significant value and expertise as we grow our business."

Altruik's focus on automating on-page SEO has helped clients see marked improvements in their presence on search engines as well as quality traffic to their sites. Additionally, and equally important, consumers and search engines reap considerable benefits of on-page SEO automation, which ensures wholly accessible, easily discoverable pages, making previously invisible content visible.

"Altruik's unique offering of ensuring full visibility of the deep web and automating on-page SEO to make all of a site's content visible to the search engines not only enriches the overall experience for consumers on the Internet but also supports the efforts of the in-house marketers and consultants seeking to enhance the SEO results for their websites," adds Tom Kwon, founder of Altruik.

About Altruik

Altruik is a Search Engine Optimization technology innovator. The company's patent-pending technology automates the more tedious and arduous on-page component of the SEO process and provides an easy-to-use and cost effective platform to support the work of in house SEO marketers and consultants seeking to accelerate SEO results with greater and faster scalability. Altruik's focus on automating on-page SEO has helped clients see marked improvements in their presence on search engines as well as quality traffic to their sites. Additional information can be found at www.altruik.com.

About Greenhill SAVP

With over $100 million under management, Greenhill SAVP makes early stage venture investments in technology-enabled services and business information services companies. Prior fund manager investments include Medidata Solutions, LivePerson, OpenWave, YellowJacket (acquired by the Intercontinental Exchange), UGO Networks (acquired by Hearst Corporation), and KnowledgeStorm (acquired by TechTarget).

Greenhill SAVP is an affiliate of Greenhill & Co., Inc. (NYSE: GHL), an independent global investment banking firm with offices in New York, London, Frankfurt, Toronto, Tokyo, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston and Chicago. Greenhill SAVP leverages its deep domain expertise, a proven investment track-record, and a global corporate network to create significant portfolio value. For more information about Greenhill SAVP, please visit www.gsavp.com.

Greenhill SAVP:

    Steve Brotman
    Managing Director
    Greenhill SAVP
    212-389-1600

SOURCE Greenhill SAVP