The ‘About Us’ page is one of the most important pages on your website; in fact, for many sites it is one of the most visited pages they have. As well as this, Google now measures websites based on what they call ‘EAT’: Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. Your ‘About Us’ page is critical in proving your worth in these metrics and thus boosting the SEO for your site.
SEO and Google rankings aside, your ‘About Us’ page is really about introducing your company to visitors; telling them who you are and what you do, whilst also showing a little of the personality and brand of your company. It is a key component in persuading potential clients to do business with you.
Here are 10 tips for improving your ‘About Us’ Page:
1. How do you write an ‘About Us’ page? Keep it simple and straightforward
Essentially, an ‘About Us’ page really only needs to show people who you are and what you do. Aim to be helpful and user-friendly, and avoid overwhelming the reader with lists of qualifications or industry specific terms they may not be familiar with. The four main building blocks of a great ‘About Us’ page are:
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Who are you?
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What do you do?
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Who do you do it for?
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Why should people hire you to do this?
2. What to include on an ‘About Us’ page: start with social media links
These days people spend more online time on social media than anywhere else. They may want to check out your social profiles, or to follow you for updates. They may also want to Tweet you, or to Tweet about you.
3. … then make sure you have great team photos
It’s not enough to take a quick snap of each employee and upload to the site, or worse, to use their badly-lit ID photo for the team ‘About Us’ page. This page is all about selling yourselves and making you look good – so you need photos that do this. In a situation where your client is deciding whether to place a considerable amount of personal trust with you, they want to see who they are dealing with, and they want you to seem trustworthy and friendly. A good photo can engender trust in potential clients, helping your company to appear more welcoming.
4. The best ‘About Us’ pages are actually about your customers, not you
You might be introducing your company, your team, your work and your achievements – but you are doing all of this in order to attract the reader and encourage them to hire you. Aim your content at the person you imagine is reading it. Think about what their needs and wants are. If there’s a common question new clients always ask you, answer it on your ‘About Us’ page.
5. Include a call to action
Your ‘About Us’ page should have at least one call to action (CTA), aiming to drive users to another page on the site or to contact you. If you mention key areas of your business in your ‘About Us’ page, be sure to link to the relevant page on your site which talks about these in more detail. Encourage readers to sign up to your email list or to contact you directly, either through a contact box directly on the page, an email link or a link to your Contact page.
6. ‘About Us’ page design is all-important
That doesn’t mean you need to have lots of decorations on the page; in fact, quite the opposite. At first glance your ‘About Us’ page should look engaging and easy to read. Very few of us, when faced with a wall of text, will get past the first sentence. Try to break your copy up into small paragraphs with headings, and include images – photos of the team, and perhaps also images of your office or the exterior of the building. Breaking up the text into manageable chunks will help to ensure people keep reading to the end.
7. Avoid being generic
Yes, your ‘About Us’ page needs to be simple and to the point – but it doesn’t also need to be boring and the same as every other company in your niche. Take a look at what your competitors are doing, and use this as a starting point to really step it up and create an engaging and interesting page. Use it to show what makes you unique and different from your competitors.
8. Make it easy for people to contact you
Some people will use a contact form on a webpage, while others dislike those and prefer to send an email. Others want to make a phone enquiry. As well as this, including your physical address will engender trust, showing that you are a real company with a real office. As mentioned above, people increasingly expect to see links to social media profiles too. Provide as many different ways to contact you as possible so that people can use their preferred method.
9. Include social proof where possible
People are reassured when they can link you to something or someone they have heard of. If you have been mentioned in a newspaper or magazine, been nominated for an industry award or have a high profile client, make use of their name or logo on your ‘About Us’ page. A great way of creating social proof is to include testimonials from previous clients, talking about how great their experience was. This makes potential clients more inclined to take that first step and contact you and can be much more effective than even the very best sales copy.
10. Make sure your ‘About Us’ page is easily accessible
Once you’ve crafted your outstanding ‘About Us’ page, you want to ensure visitors to your site will read it. Ensure you have a link prominently displayed on your homepage, ideally in the top menu bar. You want potential clients to know who you are and how you can help them, so be sure to be clear about introducing yourself when they visit your site.
For help with photos that really show off the personality of your team, get in touch with the Headshot Guy today.
