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BBP 052 Three About Page Mistakes that May Be Costing You with Krista Walsh

Shownotes:

Your About Page is the second most visited page on your site and should start building a relationship with your audience right from the start. Your About Page is where you start building trust and connection with your audience so you want to use it to your advantage. But are you making one of these 3 big mistakes that can turn your audience away instead? 

Guest Info

Krista Walsh is an SEO website copywriter. She helps creative entrepreneurs develop their website messaging so that their online home truly reflects their vision and value + shows up in Google search results.

Learn More about Krista

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Transcript

[00:00:21].550] – Liz Stapleton, Host

Your About Page is the second most visited page on your sit, and it has the power to keep people on your site or turn them away forever. Your About Page is where you start building trust, establish authority and connect with your audience so you want to use it to your full advantage.

[00:00:35].100] – Liz

Hi, I’m Liz Stapleton, host of the Blogger Breakthrough Summit and welcome to the Blogger Breakthrough Podcast. In today’s episode you’re going to hear some of the most common About Page mistakes that website SEO copyrighter superstar Krista Walsh sees all the time.

[00:00:43].620] – Liz

Krista talked about how to write a winning About Page at the 2021 Blogger Breakthrough Summit and now I’m going to share a clip of what she said with you. Let’s get to it.

[00:00:57].130] – Krista Walsh

So to start, I want to share the top three About Page mistakes that I see all the time as a website copywriter and just make sure that you are avoiding making these as you sit down to write or edit your About Page.

[00:01:24].830] – Krista

So the first one is throwing away your headline. So what I mean by this is not using your headline wisely on your About Page in particular. So a lot of times people will write their headline and it just says About or About Me or possibly My Story or they won’t have any headline at all on this page.

[00:01:24].850] – Krista

They’ll just jump right into a photo of me. And here is my little bio, or sometimes their headline will just be like, Hi, I’m Christa, for example. So this is a mistake because eight out of ten people only read the headlines on any given Web page.

[00:01:56].940] – Krista

They’ll just jump right into a photo of me. And here is my little bio, or sometimes their headline will just be like,”Hi, I’m Krista,” for example. So this is a mistake because eight out of 10 people only read the headlines on any given web page.

[00:01:56].950] – Krista

So for the people who aren’t going to bother to read the rest, you want them to get it just from that headline, or it has to be enticing enough to help people want to read the rest of the copy on your page. And these examples here, like just saying about or not having a headline or just simply like stating your name and your headline. Those don’t accomplish either of those two things.

[00:02:23].240] – Krista

So here’s a really great example of a common style of headlines that I see on About Pages, so you have to scroll down really, really far to actually get to the meat of this page. And all we get way above the fold is About Me. And that doesn’t really help us learn anything new about this company and it doesn’t help us want to read the rest of this page.

[00:02:47].960] – Krista

So mistake number two is what I say, what I call keeping it corporate. So these are about pages that feel like they’re ripped right from a business plan. So they have like a mission statement and a vision statement possibly. There’s not really a personal story. Everything is written from this vague “We” so we don’t really know who’s talking to us in this moment. Sometimes there are stock images and all of this is a mistake because remember why people are going to your About Page and what a good About Page does: builds trust, it’s relatable, establishes authenticity. And a About Page that feels super corporate and vague and boring does none of those things. So this is really a missed opportunity if you think you need to be super professional on your About Page.

[00:03:44].890] – Krista

So this is an example of kind of a middle of the road in the corporate zone About Pages from a client of mine before we wrote her About Page. So this is her previous page. And just everything from the design, to how it’s written, just feels very corporate, and a little bit boring and doesn’t truly reflect the really personal nature of her service. So she says things like, “I hand select exceptionally talented, credentialed and ambitious writers who are laser-focused on putting client needs first, et cetera.” And that just reads very job interviewy. And it’s not what clients need to hear in order to feel really connected to your brand. So this was a missed opportunity for her company.

[00:04:32].080] – Krista

So mistake number three is an interesting one. And it is when I see really, really often. And that is simply making your About Page kind of hard to find. So usually this goes two ways. So either hiding the link way in your website footer and not having it in that top navigation. So you don’t have a tab at the top that says About, it’s just in your website footer.

[00:04:57].670] – Krista

So you’re expecting readers to really hunt around for your About Page. And that’s a missed opportunity because a lot of them won’t find it. They won’t bother to find it. And then you’re losing out on that, that chance to make this, like, really deep connection with them. And then two, people who are having to look for it, sort of feel a little bit like weird about that. Like, “Why, why can I find it? Is this company real? Like, they don’t have a story to write about?”

[00:05:30].280] – Krista

And then the second way people make their About Page hard to find is by naming it something cute and warm in the navigation. This one I think is one that a lot of people are surprised to find is a mistake. So people who name their About Page tab at the top, like My Journey, Our Story, Explore Our Past, or I don’t know, something that feels very clever and warm. And you can tell what they’re trying to do.

[00:05:59].800] – Krista

But actually a lot of people won’t recognize that as an About Page. And so they’re just going to not find what they’re looking for and feel a little weird. Also, Google likes things named really clearly so that when they crawl your site map, they know how to categorize a page and an About Page is something that they’re going to want to pop up. When somebody types in your business and Google, you want that About Page showing up. Right? And naming it something cute will maybe prevent that from happening. So save the warmness for the copy on your about page and just make it really straightforward because we’ve got to get people there first, and then you can be clever and cute and fun. Once they’re there.

[00:06:42].170] 

Ok. Hopefully this episode has given you an idea of the things not to do on your About Page and what you should be doing instead. To learn more about writing a winning About Page from Krista and all things blogging, head over to bloggerbreakthough.com/podcastdeal to find out how you can get access to all of the 2021 Blogger Breakthrough Summit sessions in their entirety. Be sure to join me next time. When we dove into some pro secrets of how to write your own copy.

[00:07:09].550] – Liz

I’ll catch you then.

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