From SEO to AEO: How to Prepare Your IR Website for ChatGPT and Other AI Tools

This is the second article in our three-part series on making investor relations (IR) websites AI-ready. In Part 1, we explored why AI is reshaping investor discovery and what’s at stake if your website isn’t optimized. Now in Part 2, we turn to the practical playbook, the steps you can take to make sure your IR site is the source that AI tools rely on.

If you’ve ever asked ChatGPT to summarize a company’s earnings, you’ve already seen Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) in action. The real question is whether the answer came from your IR site or from somewhere else.

And it’s not just ChatGPT. Perplexity, Gemini, and Bing AI are becoming everyday tools for investors and analysts who want quick answers without digging through pages of search results or filings. Together, they are rewriting the rules of discovery.

What does this mean for IROs? It’s helpful to think of your website as serving both people and machines. The disclosures you publish can be shaped so AI tools find them more easily, understand them, and reuse them accurately. This playbook shares practical ways to do that and acts as a field guide for making your IR website the trusted reference point whenever investors turn to AI for answers.

1. Content structuring for AI-first discovery

When an investor types into ChatGPT or Perplexity, “Summarize Company X’s Q2 results,” the model scans the web for clear, scannable blocks of information. If your IR site has that content upfront, it is far more likely to be used as the source.

Start with your earnings releases. Place a short summary at the very top of the page with the key numbers spelled out in plain language. Revenue, EPS, and guidance are most effective when they appear right up front, easy to copy and easy to understand.

Use headings that mirror investor questions. For example:

• What were Company X’s Q2 results?
• What is Company X’s dividend policy?
• Who are the leaders at Company X?

Then give a short, direct answer underneath each one. A sentence or two is enough. 

Pro tip: Review your last two or three earnings releases and ask yourself, “Would an AI tool know where to look for the key numbers?” If the answer is no, restructuring those pages is a quick win.

2. Schema markup and structured data

AI tools don’t read websites the way people do. They look for signals that tell them what the content is and whether it can be trusted. That’s where schema markup comes in.

Schema is a type of structured data you can add to your site that labels content in a way machines understand. For IR websites, this could mean tagging an earnings release as a Financial Report or an annual meeting as an Event.

Why does this matter? When ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini chooses which source to use, structured data gives your site a credibility boost. It tells the model, “This is the official disclosure.”

Practical steps to get started:

• Review pages that are most often shared with investors and make sure they are machine-readable, not locked in PDFs alone

• Work with your web or IT team to add schema.org tags to core content like earnings releases, ESG reports, and leadership bios

• Use FAQ schema for your investor Q&A page so AI tools can pick up answers directly.

Pro tip: Start small. Pick one upcoming earnings release and apply schema to it. Then test it by asking ChatGPT or Bing AI to summarize the results. If your site shows up in the answer, you’ll know the markup is working.

3. Building an answer hub on your IR site

Think about the questions you get most often from investors. Chances are, they are the same ones being typed into an AI platform. “What’s your dividend policy?” “Who is on your board?” “How are you performing on ESG?”

The easiest way to make sure those answers come from you is to create an investor FAQ or Q&A page on your IR site. Keep the format simple: pose the question as a heading and give a short, direct answer (1-3 sentences) right underneath. 

This approach helps in two ways. First, it makes your site more useful for human visitors who want quick answers without digging through long reports. Second, it makes your content easy for AI tools to lift directly into their responses.

It can help to start small. Pick the five to ten questions that come up most often in investor calls or emails, and refresh them each quarter.

Pro tip: Try pasting one of your FAQ questions into ChatGPT or Gemini to see if your IR site is referenced. If it isn’t, a small tweak to the wording can often make the question and answer clearer for both people and AI tools.

4. Freshness and speed as ranking signals

AI tools value timeliness just as much as accuracy. When an investor asks, “What were Company X’s Q2 results?”, they will look for the most up-to-date source. If your IR site posts a summary hours or days after the wires, the model may cite the wire service instead.

A helpful approach is to publish disclosures in real time so your IR site is live with earnings, policies, and ESG updates as soon as they are announced. Where possible, provide an HTML version alongside the PDF to keep the content both accessible and machine-readable.

Minor workflow tweaks, such as using templates, automating updates, or clarifying ownership between IR and web teams, can make a significant difference.

Pro tip: A simple way to test freshness is to ask ChatGPT to summarize your earnings within an hour of release. If your site doesn’t appear, timeliness or format could be worth checking.

5. Consistency across sources

AI tools cross-check information before deciding which source to trust. If your IR site, press release, or filing present information differently, the model may default to a third-party aggregator.

Consistency is key. Matching numbers, dates, and policies across your IR site, filings, and press releases helps build trust. Even slight differences, such as rounding, can make it harder for your site to be recognized as the most reliable source.

The best way to manage this is to build a simple cross-check process into your workflow. Compare your IR site, press release, and filing side by side to catch discrepancies. This extra step helps ensure that when an investor asks Perplexity or Gemini about your earnings, your IR site is recognized as the definitive source.

Pro tip: Try a quarterly “consistency audit.” Take your latest earnings release, transcript, and web update, and review them together. If you spot differences, a small adjustment to your process can help keep every channel aligned.

6. Governance and continuous optimization

AEO works best when it’s treated as an ongoing practice rather than a single project. Investor questions evolve, AI tools update how they process information, and your own disclosures change with every quarter. To stay visible, it helps to have a simple process in place to keep your site updated and aligned. 

One way to keep AEO on track is to assign responsibility early. Pairing someone in IR with your digital or IT team can make schema updates, FAQ refreshes, and quarterly checks much smoother. Over time, these tasks can feel like a natural part of the disclosure cycle.

In the long run, this approach will turn your IR website into a living resource, instead of an archive of past filings. An always-current hub that AI tools and investors both trust.

Pro tip: Treat AEO as an extension of good disclosure practice.The message stays the same, but it becomes easier for investors and AI tools to pick it up clearly.

Quick-win checklist for IROs

What’s next

In Part 3, we’ll show how to operationalize AEO inside your disclosure workflow and turn it into a repeatable practice rather than a one-off project. The focus will be on the everyday processes that make AI-readiness part of your standard release cycle.

You’ll walk away with a practical toolkit you can use immediately, from a quarterly consistency audit to a publishing checklist that ensures real-time updates and a simple log for tracking AI citations. Together, these steps make AEO manageable and sustainable, something your team can build into every disclosure with confidence.