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How to Create a Persuasive About Us Page that Converts [Examples]

About Us webpages have two distinct audiences: (1) visitors with no knowledge of the brand and (2) visitors familiar with the products/services and/or the brand.

Your goals for these pages should be dual as well: (1) memorable enough for first-time visitors to consider becoming your customers or joining your community and (2) convincing enough to get hot leads to finally buy from you.

Yet, lots of companies dismiss their About Us pages, pasting a company description boilerplate and calling it a day. They’re forgoing the benefits of a well-done About Us section.

If your brand has fallen into that default mode, pivot now with this advice to craft a strategic, effective About Us story.

Don’t dismiss About Us pages.Tell a strategic story, says @danlsteiner via @cmicontent. #contentmarketing Click To Tweet

Should About Us be a page or site?

The question may come as a surprise, but many companies set up stand-alone sites to describe their values, provide a glimpse into day-to-day operations, and share the leadership narrative.

Amazon has done it particularly well at – www.aboutamazon.com:

The main benefit of a separate site is an ability to dominate more than one position for a branded search in Google, given that Google is actively moving to provide more diverse results by including only one (sometimes two) domain names in the rankings.

A unique domain for a company’s About page can increase its frequency in search rankings, says @danlsteiner via @cmicontent. #SEO Click To Tweet

Without a separate site, prospects or customers conducting a brand-related search on Google will only see your site once. That could make it harder to attract visitors who may get distracted by other results and click away even though they originally had been looking for you.

By maintaining your primary domain and an About domain, you can better control your customers’ behavior, ensuring that they will end up on your property. Amazon’s About property, for example, holds the second position for an Amazon search:

The About site also holds the No. 1 position for other branded queries – like innovation amazon and amazon company culture – ensuring solid brand’s presence in organic search:

TIP: If you opt to create a separate site, consider registering another variation of a dot-com domain. I’d go with newer top-level domains to increase the memorability of your brand, such as dot-press, dot-fun, or dot-store.

If your brand name is not actively searched online, maintenance of multiple sites would be difficult, or if you don’t have a lot to say about your company, you likely would benefit from keeping your About page on your original site.

If your brand name is not actively searched online or if you don’t have a lot to say about your company, keep your About page on your original site, says @danlsteiner via @cmicontent. Click To Tweet
HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Need a New Web Domain? Read this First

What content should be included?

1. Tell your story

Though published in 2011, the Weber Shandwick report on brand reputation is still valid. In its survey of consumers, 66% said their belief in a company’s top leader had a moderate or great deal of effect on the company as a whole.

The result is quite understandable as people find it easier to relate to a person than to a corporation. That’s why humanizing your brand through telling your founder or CEO’s story can be valuable.

Humanize your #brand by telling your founder’s story, says @danlsteiner via @cmicontent. #storytelling Click To Tweet

Google does a great job telling the founders’ story. It is not too wordy and gets the main takeaway in the headline – Google was started in a garage, an unconventional beginning in an unconventional story:

TIP: Sometimes visitors to an About page want succinct information. For example, writers who need general information about a company often go to the About page. Google smartly includes the basic info as a separate item on the left.

HubSpot’s About page is a nice example of visualizing the company’s story through a timeline. (It also explains it in text by detailing its mission, etc.)

Tool option: You can create cool timelines using Google Docs. Alternatively, tools like Creately can help you visualize your company’s history.

Tools like @creately can help you visualize your company’s history, says @danlsteiner via @cmicontent. Click To Tweet

2. Publish a video

Including a video on any landing page is almost always a good idea. Wyzowl’s annual state of video marketing report for 2020 indicates not only the popularity of the medium but its effectiveness.

Including a #video on any landing page is almost always a good idea, says @danlsteiner via @wyzowl @cmicontent. Click To Tweet

When it comes to your About page, video can be a perfect idea because it can convey a lot of information without taking up too much real estate on the page. They also are highly relatable and can give a glimpse behind the scenes like no other content format. Nextiva uses a video on the page to highlight its team members who “go above and beyond for their community.”

Tool option: You can create videos easily by using InVideo, which offers rich video editing features accessible online. You can customize one of its storytelling templates with your media, subtitles, and special effects:

3. Don’t forget your CTAs (and value proposition)

Whether you want visitors to continue reading your site or to buy from you, the About page should make both paths clear. For example, Content Marketing Institute’s About Us page outlines a path for visitors based on their level of expertise and interests, providing clear guidelines as to what they may want to do next:

Salesforce’s About page invites readers to read about its products or watch demos:

The page also lists some featured clients and includes brief testimonials.

Explaining your value proposition here can be a good idea, especially if you do it in a visually appealing way like Zeemo does:
 

Tool option: You can personalize your CTAs by using Finteza, which allows you to serve custom banners based on the user’s location or past engagement with the site:

For content-focused sites, Alter can take About page visitors further into the site through artificially intelligent personalized content suggestions.

4. Use schema and semantics

Apart from positioning your business as a trustworthy brand, your About Us page serves another important purpose – sending important signals that Google will use to evaluate the site’s rankings.

Google encourages its human raters to evaluate how trustworthy the site is by checking its About Us page to get an idea of how real and authoritative the brand is and whether it belongs on the first page of Google results.

.@Google encourages its human raters to evaluate how trustworthy the site is by checking its About Us page to get an idea of whether it belongs on Page One, says @seosmarty via @cmicontent. #SEO Click To Tweet

Building your About page the way Google can understand it is a good idea. That is where Schema.org, an online community promoting structured data, comes into play. A special type of code, schema conveys the meaning and the content structure for the algorithm machine to interpret.

When it comes to the About Us page, you likely want to use organization schema, which also links to your official social media channels for Google to make those important associations.

Tool option: You can use this generator from Hall Analysis to create a code for your About page.

You can use @joehall #HallAnalysis generator to create a code for your About page, says @danlsteiner via @cmicontent. #tools Click To Tweet

If you want to go one step further and help Google associate you with the right industries, use semantic analysis to create copy for the About page that Google can understand and correctly place inside its knowledge base. Text Optimizer is a tool that can help. Run your major topic through its “optimize” section to generate the list of important associations and related entities that would help Google connect all the dots.

Use @textoptimizer to create optimized copy that will help @Google connect all the dots, says @danlsteiner via @cmicontent. #tools Click To Tweet

Should we do everything?

I realize if you followed all these recommendations, the page might become too crowded to do any good for a visitor. Prioritize the ones you think will have the biggest effect on your audiences.

Think of your About Us page as a content hub. You don’t need to put all your content there, but It should connect all the dots around your brand – your mission statement, media coverage, blog, contact information, etc.

Please note: All tools included this post are suggested by the author, not the CMI editorial team. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used).

This October, you can check out Content Marketing Institute’s About Us page in real life. Join us and thousands of your fellow content marketers at Content Marketing World.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute