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Home > People > Our Team > Dave Burgess

Dave Burgess

Principal, Digital Search & Content

Bio

Dave Burgess is a Principal in Apax’s Operational Excellence Practice (since 2015), leading Digital Search & Content. With 20 years of technical‑SEO expertise, he guides portfolio companies across the entire search landscape—from traditional Google SERPs and Local Pack visibility to emerging LLM‑driven experiences like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

A significant part of Dave’s remit is orchestrating seamless digital transitions when Portfolio Companies are engaged in M&A integrations, rebrands, redevelopments of their websites and/or migrations of CMS platforms. This includes strategic Domain name acquisitions, end‑to‑end website rebuild projects, website / URL structure planning, integrating acquired web properties & unifying diverse CMS stacks.

Working in the Revenue Growth & Digital Acceleration team, he supports Portfolio Companies accelerate through the deployment of advanced Content Strategies. This includes both eradicating thin / stale content whilst concurrently, identifying opportunities through proprietary Content KPI frameworks then amplifying the impacts with sustainable Brand, Citation & Authority building strategies to drive awareness in both Google and the LLM ecosystem.

Prior to Apax, Dave served as President of Ayima, the specialist search‑engine‑optimization agency he launched in New York. He grew the office from inception, assembled an industry‑leading team and secured Fortune 100 clients including Verizon, Sports Illustrated, MGM Resorts and ZocDoc. As Verizon’s enterprise SEO lead he delivered triple‑digit organic growth and multi‑million‑dollar incremental revenues.

Dave is fluent in optimizing modern JavaScript frameworks (Node.js, React, Angular), Headless/Composable CMS platforms (Content Stack, Contentful) as well as 'traditional' CMS platforms (Hubspot CMS, Sitecore,  WordPress, Umbraco, Kentico). His recent work extends those skill sets to LLM‑ready architectures, ensuring that application performance, structured data and prompt‑aligned content all converge to maximize exposure in both classical and generative search paradigms.

He read Human Sciences at University College London.

Living our values

"Building an agency from the ground up has been a highlight of my career to date. I was incredibly proud of the genesis of my team: I arrived in NYC with a laptop and a suitcase, then left having built a team of 15 industry-leading experts. This was all possible through a tireless work ethic and the curation of product, whose foundations lay in uncovering the insights that others would miss. The Apax value that resonates most strongly with me therefore is in having impact through insight & tenacity."

Office

New York

Dave's Story

Originally hailing from the UK, Dave moved to NYC in 2012 to build the US operation for a leading technical Search Engine Optimization agency, and his involvement with Apax began soon after. Dedicated to Search & SEO since the days of Alta Vista he has led programs at some of the world’s largest enterprises and thrives solving the daily challenges faced by the Apax funds' portfolio companies in the constantly evolving ecosystem of Search. He is a 5-time marathon finisher & keen wildlife photographer.