AEO for London Finance Brands.

Map your structural strategy to the queries you want to win. The London finance prompts AI engines see most often:

• Category lookups. “Best wealth manager London 2026,” “best private bank for HNW individuals UK,” “best SIPP provider for £500K pension.”
• Alternatives. “Alternatives to St James’s Place,” “alternatives to Hargreaves Lansdown for active trading,” “robo-advisors UK that are not Nutmeg.”
• Direct comparisons. “Hargreaves Lansdown vs AJ Bell vs Interactive Investor,” “St James’s Place vs True Potential,” “Coutts vs Brown Shipley for HNW.”
• Constraint-loaded. “Wealth manager London under £100K minimum,” “ISA provider with low fund fees and good app,” “FX hedging provider for SME importing from EU.”
• Compliance-flavored. “Is X firm FCA-authorised,” “does X offer ESG screening,” “what protection does FSCS give on Y account type.”
• Stage-specific. “First-time investor UK best platform,” “where to put £50K inheritance UK 2026,” “moving SIPP from one provider to another.”

Every one of these queries is winnable with structural work. The AI engine is making a citation decision and it needs sources to summarise. If your firm’s site is structured to be summarisable, you are in the candidate set.

1. FinancialService or FinancialProduct JSON-LD with depth

Schema.org’s FinancialService type is the canonical machine-readable container for a wealth manager, broker, IFA, or financial planner. The deep version includes name, address, areaServed, serviceType (wealth management, SIPP, ISA, etc.), feesAndCommissionsSpecification, identifier (declare the FCA Reference Number here), parentOrganization (if your firm is part of a group), and provider. Most London finance sites either skip schema entirely or ship the thin Organization stub. Deep FinancialService JSON-LD is the single highest-leverage technical fix because it tells AI engines exactly what regulator, what services, what fee structure, and what jurisdictions apply.

2. Organization JSON-LD with FCA registration declared

For UK finance specifically, the identifier property in Organization JSON-LD should carry your FCA Reference Number with the propertyID set to “FCA Reference Number.” It ties the page to a number a reader can check on the FCA Register, and it is a cheap fix.

3. Optional llms.txt summary

An optional Markdown file at yourfirm.com/llms.txt can summarize service categories, client segments, and key public pages for compatible tools. Support is incomplete, Google does not use it, and the file does not replace crawlable service pages. Read the llms.txt reference for the current limits.

4. Named partner / portfolio manager E-E-A-T

AI engines reward sites that show real humans with real expertise. For UK finance this is even more important because buyers are choosing whom to trust with their money. Add bio pages for partners, portfolio managers, and senior advisers. Each bio should have a Person JSON-LD block, qualifications named (CFA, CFP, FPFS, IMC, Chartered Financial Planner, etc.), years of experience, AUM responsibility if disclosable, and a link from the firm’s homepage. UK finance brands that ship faceless “our team” carousels lose to firms that ship real bio pages with credentials.

5. FCA-aware comparison content

The objection most UK finance marketers raise is “we cannot name competitors.” The FCA does not prohibit comparative advertising. For MiFID business, COBS 4.5A.7 requires a comparison to be meaningful and presented in a fair and balanced way, with its sources specified and its key facts and assumptions included. A page titled “Hargreaves Lansdown vs Interactive Investor: 2026 Fee Comparison” with cited fee data, a fair side-by-side table, dated and sourced, can be written to meet that rule, but your compliance team should sign it off. Refusing to publish comparison content keeps you out of the entire alternatives / X vs Y query universe.

6. Third-party mentions in UK finance press

AI engines weight where else your firm is mentioned. The places that move the needle for London finance:

• Financial Times articles, opinion pieces, and listicles
• The Times Money and Sunday Times Wealth List coverage
• Citywire fund manager profiles and Selector listings
• This Is Money roundups and reader-recommended firm lists
• MoneyWeek, Investors’ Chronicle, and Money Marketing
• FCA Register entry well-formatted and complete
• Companies House complete director listings
• Trade body member directories (PIMFA, CISI, etc.)

You cannot manufacture these overnight. You can earn them with PR-led pitching to the right journalists, by being available for category commentary, by ensuring your FCA Register and Companies House entries are clean, and by being mentioned positively in trade-body directories.

1. Add deep FinancialService JSON-LD to homepage, About / Regulatory page, and key service pages. Include feesAndCommissionsSpecification, serviceType, areaServed.
2. Add Organization JSON-LD with FCA Reference Number as a properly typed identifier. Include parentOrganization if applicable.
3. Consider an optional llms.txt file. Publish one only if a maintained summary of key public pages is useful. It does not guarantee citations.
4. Check retrieval access in robots.txt. Confirm that OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User, and PerplexityBot are not blocked. Decide GPTBot, Google-Extended, and other training crawler access separately.
5. Build named partner / portfolio manager bio pages with Person JSON-LD. Include CFA / CFP / FPFS / Chartered status, years of experience, AUM responsibility (if disclosable), and qualifications.
6. Build at least one fair comparison page against a top competitor. FCA-compliant framing, dated fee data, source citations, side-by-side table.
7. Make service / regulatory pages crawlable HTML rather than gated PDFs. The fee schedule, FAQ, and regulatory disclosures should be HTML pages with their own URLs.
8. Add FAQPage schema on a real visible FAQ section covering the questions buyers actually ask: minimum portfolio size, fees, FSCS protection, how onboarding works, ESG options, transfer process from existing providers.

Run the firm homepage and About or Regulatory page through the free Meridian15 AEO audit. The 13-check, 66-point audit shows which technical pieces are missing, with no email gate. Start with accurate FinancialService JSON-LD, FCA details that match public records, named partner pages, and crawlable service content. Publish llms.txt only as an optional summary. None of these changes guarantees a citation, so track results separately.

Related: web design, the build side of the same work.