Best IR Websites: The Top 10 IR Websites by Traffic (and how they do it)
A few weeks ago a client in the Investor Relations (IR) industry approached us and asked:
“Which Investor Relations (IR) Websites bring in the most traffic?”
“What content do the best investor relations websites publish that draws investor interest?”
"What type of content could investor relations websites publish to get more traffic from investors?"
Here at Scripted we offer an SEO-driven content marketing platform called Cruise Control. That means we live and breath SEO data and content marketing strategy every day. These questions posed a good challenge, as we usually interact with Marketing focused websites, not Investor Relations websites.
We asked ourselves, if we stepped into the shoes of an Investor Relations Officer, what would we love to see? These things jumped to the top of the list:
- We'd love to see which investor relations (IR) websites brought in the most traffic
- We'd love to know what type of content gets in front of the most investors by ranking well in Google's organic (free!) results
- In addition to pure traffic, we'd love to know what type of content investors value the most?
- Lastly, what content could IR websites publish that 1) gets a lot of traffic 2) attract potential investors and 3) give investors everything they want
We cranked up our research and found out some very interesting findings.
In addition, we discovered a bunch of great content opportunities for investor relations websites. Keep reading to the bottom to find our 6 specific recommendations. Each of these content ideas could significantly grow an IR site's traffic and attract more potential investors.
Before we jump into the results, let's review what Investor Relations and Investor Relations Websites are.
What is an Investor Relations Website?
Investopedia defines Investor Relations as, "The investor relations (IR) department is present in most medium-to-large public companies that provides investors with an accurate account of company affairs. This helps private and institutional investors make informed buy and sell decisions."
An investor relations website serves that function by providing investors information about a company's financial results, background, management team, strategy and more.
The Purpose of an Investor Relations Website
According to Sharon Merril Associates, a firm that specializes in investor relations, companies should strive to have their investor relations website go beyond providing basic financial information. In their words, companies should think of their investor relations websites as a tool to help investors understand a company's story.
A great IR website is not only about compliance; it’s also about creating a space investors can look to understand the qualitative aspects of your company’s story. While providing financial data and reports is important, what separates the best sites in the world are those that focus on providing context on the company’s strategy and clarity about its execution and vision.
Methodology:
Here's how we dug through the data, and some limitations we ran into.
- We looked at traffic for 8,017 investor websites. Many thanks to YCharts.com for helping with the list of IR websites!
- We used SEMRush’s SEO API to bring back how much traffic each site gets and how many keywords it ranks for in Google’s organic search results.
- Due to limitations with SEMRush’s API, we only included investor websites with a subdomain including any of the words “ir,” “investor”, or “investors”. We’re talking with SEMRush to see if we if there’s a way to include investor sites that host their investor site in a directory like https://www.abm.com/investors/. If you’d like to get a notification when we update the results with that data, please click here to let us know.
- To understand the goal of investor relations websites and what content investors look for, we combed through a study published on the Sharon Merril Associates blog
The Results - The Top Investor Relations Websites by Traffic and Keywords
- SEMRush gave us data back for 2,600 of the 8,017 sites. The rest likely don’t get enough traffic to register in the SEMRush data, or host their IR website in a subdirectory like https://www.abm.com/investors/ hosts their investor section.
- Facebook’s investor website (https://investor.fb.com/) brings in the most traffic, pulling in 343,724 visits per month.
- Activision’s investor website ranked for the most keywords, tallying 15,181 ranked keywords.
- We analyzed each top 10 list to see what content brought in the most traffic, see the results for that after the rankings.
Quick Glossary of Terms
- IR Website: The investor relations website for the company. Due to limitations with the SEMRush API, we only included IR sites that started with “ir,” “investor”, or “investors”.
- Organic Keywords: The number of unique keywords that the IR website ranks for in Google's organic (non-paid) results. This includes any ranking within the top 10 pages of Google.
- Organic Clicks per Month: This is the number of clicks, or visits, coming in from the non-paid search results in Google. Searchers click a search result when they search a term in Google, click on one of the non-paid search results that the IR site ranks for, and land on the IR site.
Top 10 IR Websites by Organic Traffic
| Rank | IR Website | Organic Keywords | Organic Clicks/Mo |
| 1 | https://investor.fb.com | 5,854 | 343,724 |
| 2 | https://investors.att.com | 7,530 | 166,644 |
| 3 | https://ir.aboutamazon.com | 4,805 | 101,119 |
| 4 | http://ir.ultabeauty.com | 3,145 | 64,080 |
| 5 | http://investor.apple.com | 4,066 | 64,029 |
| 6 | http://investor.bankofamerica.com | 6,190 | 42,573 |
| 7 | https://investor.t-mobile.com | 1,957 | 34,699 |
| 8 | https://ir.homedepot.com | 3,973 | 25,154 |
| 9 | https://ir.chipotle.com | 1,732 | 22,914 |
| 10 | http://ir.tesla.com | 6,187 | 22,784 |
Top 10 IR Websites by Organic Keywords
| Rank | IR Website | Organic Keywords |
Organic Clicks/Mo
|
| 1 | http://investor.activision.com | 15,181 | 13,618 |
| 2 | https://ir.viacom.com/ | 8,196 | 1,240 |
| 3 | http://investor.textron.com/ | 8,133 | 3,135 |
| 4 | https://investors.livenationentertainment.com/ | 7,672 | 1,013 |
| 5 | https://investors.att.com/ | 7,530 | 166,644 |
| 6 | https://ir.brunswick.com/ | 6,270 | 794 |
| 7 | http://ir.avisbudgetgroup.com/ | 6,234 | 908 |
| 8 | http://investor.bankofamerica.com/ | 6,190 | 42,573 |
| 9 | http://ir.tesla.com/ | 6,187 | 22,784 |
| 10 | https://investor.fb.com/ | 5,854 | 343,724 |
Would you like to see where your investor relations website ranks?
Click here to let us know - We'll send a custom report of your traffic, keywords, and the pages on your site that bring in the most traffic.
What Content Brings in the Most Investor Traffic?
Once we found out which sites brought in the most traffic, we dug into each site's data to find out HOW that got that traffic. What types of content brings in the most visitors? Do earnings releases? Management bio pages? Press releases?
Here's what we found.
Financial Information and Earnings Releases
If we look at the top trafficked pages on Facebook's IR site, we can see most carry financial info. After the homepage the investor events page, the financials page, stock information page, and quarterly earnings announcements all rank highly. Press releases rank high, with the content of those usually announcing financial results.
This makes a lot of sense, as investors first look for financial results and information.
Leadership, Board, and Corporate Governance
One interesting finding that jumps out is that Facebook's Corporate Governance page is the 5th highest traffic page on its investor relations site. This page contains short bios of each management team member, each board member, headshots of each, and links to its bylaws, corporate governance guidelines, and other types of governance documents.
Do you want to know how Facebook can get much more traffic to its investor site and allow its Investor Relations team to better tell the Facebook story?
They should take a tip from Tesla.
Facebook does not publish a page for each individual management team member, they just list all of them on one page. This is fine, but they lose out on an opportunity to rank for each leadership team member's name.
For example, David Wehner is Facebook's CFO. If we look in the helpful SEO tool Ahrefs, we can see people search the term "David Wehner" ~13,000 times per month. That's a lot.
See the screenshot below for what shows up in Google when people search "David Wehner". You may notice Facebook's IR site does not show up.
Instead of Facebook's investor relations site showing up, sites like Salary.com, LinkedIn.com, CNBC, and MarriedBiography.com (seriously) show up.
Compare that to Tesla's top investor pages. Multiple of their top traffic pages come from their management and board pages. This is because they host a separate page for each leadership team member, see the screenshot below from Ahrefs.
Tesla's page for Linda Johnson Rice brings in an estimated 509 visits per month by itself. Better yet, when people Google "linda johnson rice" Tesla's IR page pops up first.
The first result in Google gets ~40% of the clicks for those searches, which gives Tesla's IR team first crack at telling searchers who Linda is and why she's a quality board member. If IR sites structure their board and leadership pages with individual pages for each member they'll get more traffic. More importantly, the Investor Relations team for that company can tell the story they want to tell, instead of leaving that up to news outlets, salary databases, and marital history sites.
Events and Partners
Content about events and partners also jumped out when we combed through the data. For example, this news release about MLB.TV on T-Moibile's IR site ranks for 236 keywords and brings in 179 organic visits per month.
Most of that traffic comes from the keyword "mlbtv", since T-Mobile's IR site ranks on page 2 of Google for that term.
Now imagine if T-Mobile created a dedicated page on their IR site about their MLB.TV partnership, a page that gave investors every bit of information they would want to know about how MLB.TV and how it impacts T-Mobile's results. T-Mobile could likely rank higher and bring in more potential investors.
Publishing dedicated event and partner pages would help IR sites better communicate their story and get more traffic. People search the names of partners and events potentially thousands or even tens of thousands of times per month. For example, the term "Dreamforce", Salesforce's annual conference, gets searched 14,000 times per month.
FAQ/Glossary
We ran across many FAQ sections getting a large amount of traffic on IR sites. See examples below from Amazon's and Ulta Beauty.
Publishing a comprehensive FAQ page for investors will not only help investors understand the company better, but it can bring in traffic from current and potential investors.
Along with FAQ pages, we see a great opportunity for IR sites to help investors understand key concepts and terms through a glossary.
Take this press release from Herbalife about their launch of an allergen-free protein shake. By itself it ranks for 50 keywords and brings in 54 clicks per month.
This is great, but a deeper look at the keywords reveals that people would like to know the ingredient list for Herbalife products.
While only a few hundred people per month search for "herbalife ingredients list" and similar terms, much more search volume exists on the actual ingredient names. For example, here are the ingredients for one of Herbalife's shakes, taken from a listing on Amazon.
Loading the first bunch of ingredients into Ahrefs reveals massive search volumes for many of the ingredients. "Inuliin" itself receives 37,000 searches per month.
How could the Herbalife IR site use this to help educate and attract investors?
Publishing a glossary and a dedicated page for each ingredient (and any other key terms) would let Herbalife's IR site rank highly for that term and attract a good percentage of those searches. More importantly, that content would help Herbalife by explaining what each ingredient is from their point of view, how they use it, and why it makes their products better.
This pattern applies across all industries, not just health. Every industry contains its own jargon and words, and clearly educating investors on what they mean can improve an IR site's effectiveness.
What Content Do Investors Most Want to See?
Traffic only matters if it converts to something meaningful for a company. What types of traffic would help an Investor Relations Officer do his/her job better?
When looking at SEO data and crafting Content Marketing roadmaps, we love to dig deeper and ask ourselves, "how can we get ideal visitors to the site?"
The ideal visitor for an investor relations website is a current or potential investor.
Makes sense.
This includes buy-side and sell-side analysts, research associates, individual investors, portfolio managers, certified financial planners, and other types of investors.
Luckily we ran across this helpful survey put out by Ipreo on "Best Practices for Investor Relations Websites". In it they asked what investors want in an investor relations website.
Feedback right from the mouth of your target market is worth its weight in gold. We pulled out a few key items from the survey, see the list below for some interesting findings.
Investor Survey - What Investors Want in an Investor Relations Website
Investors universally said they wanted easy to find, up-to-date financial information. They want the site to offer easy navigation, clear communication, and quick access call transcripts, earnings presentations, recorded webcasts/calls, and other information. That makes sense, and every investor relations site should offer that information.
But what about content that many IR sites may lack?
Investor Survey - What Content Is Lacking from IR Sites That Investors Want?
Investors wanted a number of things that many investor sites may lack. We break them down below.
Company Summary and Strategy
Investors want more than just financials. They want to know the company background, its strategy, what makes it unique, and what makes it a good investment. Investors in the survey said this about company information:
"in this day and age, more and more roadshows for IPOs have videos explaining about the company. I think having a 5-minute video explaining the businesses of the company might be helpful"
- Portfolio Manager at a $4.4B (EAUM) Growth-Based Investment Manager
"I like to see what a company does, so I like pictures on the website. Visuals and presentations on the website are helpful"
- Survey response from an investment manager
Product and Service Descriptions and Explanations
Investors want to know what products and services a company offers. That makes perfect sense too. They want to understand, from an investors perspective, what products and services will drive results. Here's what a few investors said in the survey:
"I'm a simple man - tell me what you do, show me some examples"
- Portfolio Manager at a $2.0B (EAUM) Value-Based Investment Manager
"industry, company, and product information.”
- Portfolio Manager at a $421.8M (EAUM) GARP-Based Investment Manager
Company Management and Board Member Information
Some investors, like Warren Buffet, drive their investments by finding great leaders. Investors echoed this theme in the survey. Here's what they said:
"a who’s who of the board and what their backgrounds and tenures are, and for the key leadership of the company."
-Portfolio Manager at a $90.2B (EAUM) Value-Based Investment Manager
“The company should show a list of their operations and their corporate governance board.”
- Portfolio Manager at a $90.0B (EAUM) Value-Based Investment Manager
"if we have questions ... (we) want to meet the management (team)"
- Research Associate at a $462.0M (EAUM) Value-Based Investment Manager
Presentations
Many investors said they wanted presentations used during calls and events. Presentations fill in the story behind the numbers and help investors better understand company strategy.
“I think having presentation materials is good. It would be helpful for investors to see ‘bridges’"
- Portfolio Manager at a $290.7M (EAUM) Value-Based Investment Manager
“One thing I like that not all companies do is to have the most recent slide deck used with investors available, from roadshows or at a conference."
- Portfolio Manager at a $4.4B (EAUM) Growth-Based Investment Manager
"I love looking at presentations from maybe a year ago through today so I can see what has changed in how they are presenting the story."
- Portfolio Manager at a $497.7M (EAUM) Value-Based Investment Manager
What Content Will Bring Traffic AND Give Investors What They Want?
When we build content marketing calendars for our Cruise Control clients, we focus on producing content that:
- Will bring in ideal prospects (investors in this case)
- Will generate enough traffic to matter
- Has a reasonable chance of ranking on page 1 of Google (that's where all the traffic is)
- Is specifically designed to rank highly in Google. This means nailing the correct subject matter, word count, tone, grade level readability, questions answered and a number of other key factors.
What is that content for Investor Relations Websites? What content will bring in ideal investor readers, will generate enough traffic to matter, and can rank highly in Google?
See the list below for what we recommend. For each content type we answer these questions:
- Do investors want this information?
- Will this content drive organic traffic from Google?
- Is this a good idea for an investor relations website?
- How should this content appear on an investor relations website?
Recommendation 1: Full Management Team and Board Biographies
Do investors want this information?
Yes, this came through loud and clear in the investor survey results.
Will this content drive organic traffic from Google?
Yes, lots of search volume exist around the names of executives and board members.
Why is this a good idea for Investor Relations Websites?
Who would you rather rank first - a news article, salary database, marriage website, LinkedIn, or your investor website? Who do you want to tell your story?
How should this content appear on an IR website?
Following these guidelines will help attract the most possible traffic from Google. SEO experts can apply many more optimizations, but this basic structure will get you most of the way there.
- One leadership team page (e.g. https://investors.globalpaymentsinc.com/corporate-governance/management) that lists every leadership team member, and links out to the dedicated page for that person
- A dedicated page for every management team member (e.g. https://ir.tesla.com/management/jb-straubel). The content on the page should include at least the following sections:
- A full background and bio
- The executive's history at the company
- A professional headshot
- Extra credit: include a professionally-shot short video interview
- Board member section - follow the same pattern as the leadership team page
Recommendation 2: Company Background, Information and Strategy Pages
Do investors want this information?
Yes, multiple investors noted this as key information in the survey.
Will this content drive organic traffic from Google?
Traffic - yes, lots of traffic around company names. Producing a comprehensive company overview can vault that page high in Google results when searchers query on the company name. See data below from Ahrefs - both Brunswick and Textron both get searched tens of thousands of times per month.
Why is this a good idea for Investor Relations Websites?
Who would you like telling your company's story? Do you want a news article ranking ahead of you? LinkedIn? Publishing detailed information on the company background and strategy puts a company's IR team in control of their narrative.
How should this content appear on an IR website?
Publishing a simple "About Us" section provides a great step one. That page should provide:
- A company history
- What makes the company unique
- Details on the company's mission and strategy
- Links to management and board member pages
- Links to product & service pages
Investors gave feedback that they would find value in helpful videos, infographics, pictures, and other rich media.
Recommendation 3: Product and Services Sections
Do investors want this information?
Yes, multiple investors noted seeing product and service information as highly useful.
Will this content drive organic traffic from Google?
Yes. People search product names thousands, tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands of times per month. IR sites can provide dedicated, comprehensive product pages that tell investors how each product contributes to the company's results.
For example, take Activision's IR site. It does a great job showing each of its games on the main page of it's IR site.
However, the site does not publish individual pages on each title. Chalk that up as a missed opportunity, since "crash bandicoot" sees 216,000 searches per month and "overwatch" brings in an astounding 1.9 million searches per month.
Creating dedicated pages for each title and optimizing those pages for the game title can capture some of this traffic.
Why is this a good idea for Investor Relations Websites?
Hosting this content empowers IR teams to control the narrative around the companies products and services. It can also push down competitors and other sites that may rank for their product & service names. In our example above, Wikipedia ranks #2 for "crash bandicoot". There's no reason Activision's investor page shouldn't rank highly too. Publishing a dedicated product page that tells investors how Crash Bandicoot positively impacts Activision's results can help IR departments reach more investors with the correct message.
How should this content appear on an IR website?
Companies should start by creating a simple index page grouping and listing all of the company's products and services. That page should link out to a dedicated page for each product and service. Each product and service page should tell readers the following:
- What the products or service is
- This history of the product or serice
- Information investors would find useful, this could include key differentiators, sales results, or anything else that would help an investor
- Extra credit: including photos, videos and other visuals can help investors better understand the product or service
Recommendation 4: Industry Information and Glossary of Key Terms
Do investors want this information?
Yes. Providing definitions of key terms can help investors by making sure they understand terms and jargon used on earnings calls, presentations, and other company communication.
Will this content drive organic traffic from Google?
Yes, people can search industry terms and jargon thousands, or tens of thousands of times per month. Investors likely search on them when covering a new company or industry. Our previous example of Herbalife showed the immense search volume for ingredient names. This same pattern exists across most industries, from insurance to automotive to travel. For example, these insurance industry terms all carry over 10,000 searches per month.
Why is this a good idea for Investor Relations Websites?
Producing this content and getting it to rank gives an IRO the power to find new potential investors and educate existing ones. It lets the IRO explain how the concept applies to the company and drives investor understanding of the company.
How should this content appear on an IR website?
Producing this content can be as easy as publishing the following pages.
- A glossary index page
- A page for every key term. This page should include a definition, an explanation of how the term it applies to the company. The page should explain the importance of the term to investors.
- Extra credit: If possible, include an illustration or explainer video.
Recommendation 5: Events & Conference Writeups
Do investors want this information?
Absolutely. Read what these investors said in the survey.
“I would say one part is to have a webcast link on their website for every conference they present at. Most companies do that, but I find it frustrating for the ones that do not..."
- Portfolio Manager at a $503.3M (EAUM) Value-Based Investment Manager
Easy-to-get-to company presentations. . . and listing any upcoming events for the management team
- Portfolio Manager at a $1.6B (EAUM) Alternative Hedge Fund
Will this content drive organic traffic from Google?
Many people search on event and conference names. Producing a comprehensive piece on the event can vault that page high in Google results when searchers query on the company name.
Why is this a good idea for Investor Relations Websites?
Producing this content and getting it to rank lets an IRO find and interact with new potential investors. It gives the IRO a chance to craft a positive narrative on why the company is involved and the benefit to the business.
How should this content appear on an IR website?
Many IR sites already show readers an "Events" page. This counts as a great step one. Usually this page just links to recorded talks and presentations from the event. We recommend taking this content a step further and publishing the following:
- A page listing all future and past events that links to dedicated event pages
- A dedicated page for each event that provides an overview of the event, why the company is involved, and any presentations given at the event. This could be webcasts, slide decks, video, helpful worksheets, and anything else presented at the event. Video and audio should be embedded in the page, not just a link.
Recommendation 6: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Initiatives
Do investors want this information?
The US SIF Foundation’s 2016 Report on Sustainable and Responsible Investing Trends in the United States tells readers:
“as of year-end 2015, more than one out of every five dollars under professional management in the United States — $8.72 trillion or more — was invested according to SRI strategies”
(US SIF Foundation, 2016, http://www.ussif.org/trends)
Investors value Sustainable and Responsible Investing (SRI). According to this blog post from Sharon Merrill Associates,
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives are fast becoming a standard for public companies globally and across all sectors . . . CSR has moved beyond a “nice-to-have” item within a public company’s corporate narrative.
Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives and Sustainable and Responsible Investing matter more than ever. It's important for IR sites to tell that side of the company's story.
Will this content drive organic traffic from Google?
Yes, especially when focused around key organization names or key terms within CSR and SRI. A good SEO keyword strategy can uncover these and make sure the IR site is set up to rank highly for them
Why is this a good idea for Investor Relations Websites?
With more than 20% of investor dollars invested according to SRI strategies, it's imperative that IR sites offer that content. Investors drive decisions based on it. Telling the company's best story can attract more investors and investment.
How should this content appear on an IR website?
Companies should shout this information from the rooftops. Specifically, we recommend publishing the following:
- An overview page that describes the company's CSR/SRI strategy and lists all initiatives
- A dedicated page for each initiative that provides an overview, what the company is doing.
- News, videos, infographics and other media can provide compelling content.
Conclusion
Hopefully the data we collected and analyzed answers the questions:
- Which investor relations (IR) websites bring in the most organic traffic?
- What type of content gets in front of the most investors by ranking well in Google's organic results?
- What type of content do investors value the most?
- What content could IR websites publish that 1) gets a lot of traffic 2) attracts potential investors and 3) gives investors everything they want
Do you run Investor Relations for your company? Would you like us to analyze your IR site and make some suggestions on content that can help you attract more investors and grow your traffic? Click here to let us know.
About Scripted & CruiseControl
Scripted was founded in 2011 as a freelance writing marketplace that matched businesses with experienced and vetted writers in their niche. Over the last 8 years, the team here at Scripted saw that many businesses struggled to create and implement the content strategy needed to increase conversions and and accomplish their marketing goals.
In late 2017 we started to develop what is now the Cruise Control Program, a comprehensive, data-driven content marketing program that provides keyword research, content strategy, competitive analysis, content creation, analytics and more.
No longer do Cruise Control members publish and pray for the traffic to come. Instead, they have a roadmap, backed by extensive search data, for every piece of content they publish.
The style, length, subject, and format of every blog post is designed to bring targeted traffic by organically ranking for keywords potential customers are searching for in volume every month.
With Scripted For Enterprise you can sit back, relax, and know that your website is producing consistent, quality, SEO-focused content every month.
