How to Write an Epic About Page in WordPress

Your About page is arguably the most important page in any WordPress site. It is a window into who is writing, selling, or producing whatever the visitor is reading or about to purchase. Think about it, don’t you click About pages any time you’re interested in what you just read?

My stats on several of my site show the About page to be one of the two pages visitors click after coming to the site to read a post. They either read another informational page or the About page. On this site, visitors either click About or Services, depending on whether they’re in the market for WordPress services. Coole note: as I was writing this, it happened:

What should be included

There are a lot of tips out there on what is absolutely necessary. I reviewed the 4 most-trusted posts on the subject and, in the specifics, they vary a lot. In the whole, they say pretty much the same thing, so here’s my advice, which includes some of theirs because some are universal. – I’ve linked others’ advice at the end if you’d like to review them, too.

• A photo of you or your team. Make it a current photo! When you go to conferences or meetings or a Skype video call, you don’t want someone’s first reaction to be a shocked double-take. #awkward
• Names are important, both for the visitor and for SEO. If you just say “I” or “we” all over the page, you haven’t properly introduced yourself. I wrote mine in the 3rd person, but I am considering a 1st person re-write in a couple of weeks after monitoring this iteration.
• Either/both a little of how you got where you are or what you do now. I prefer both because how you got somewhere has a lot of influence on the present. It is difficult to know how much history to give, so a link to an aptly-named post or page (not in the navigation, especially no drop-downs) is a good way to write more about your journey. If someone is going to spend thousands of dollars, they often want to know.
• Make it easy to contact you. Put your social links and a link to your contact page to make things easy for your visitor.

Those are my suggestions that apply to 99% of sites. Certain things should be added for niches of one type or another, but it’s not a good idea to cut any of these four items out of your About page.

Here are those other good tips on writing your About page: Copyblogger, Six Revisions, ProBlogger (who has apparently taken his out of his menu), and DIY Themes.

Your About page

Is it time to re-visit your About page? I’m going to review mine monthly now.

Proud of your About page? Show it off in the comments – let’s go take a look and learn from each other.