An about page is not a brand story contest. It is the public record of who runs the company, where they work, what they actually sell, and how a stranger can check any of that. Google’s quality raters read it that way. Buyers read it that way. If the page is a stack of mission adjectives with no names, the rest of the site has nothing solid to stand on.
We treat our own about record as part of the same evidence set as author profiles, service copy and reporting rules. The job is not to sound impressive. The job is to be checkable.
What The Page Has To Answer
A useful about page answers five questions without forcing the visitor to open another tab.
Who owns and runs the work? Where does the company operate from? What work do you actually take on? What proof exists that this is a real firm? How does someone reach a person?
If any of those are missing, the page is a poster. Search systems trying to understand the organisation will lean on whatever else they can find: a Google Business Profile, a Companies House or SEC filing, a LinkedIn company page, reviews, or nothing. When those sources disagree with the about copy, trust drops.
You do not need a novel. You need specific nouns: legal or trading name, people, city, services you deliver, and a contact route that works.
Name People, Not Personas
“Our passionate team of digital ninjas” is not an identity. A rater cannot search it. A buyer cannot email it.
List the people who are accountable for the work, with photographs that look like the same humans who appear on calls. Give each person a role that matches what they do. Founder and CEO is fine if that is true. Head of Team is fine if that person runs delivery. Do not invent titles to fill a grid.
We name Ben Lowe as founder, Sassin Lowe as co-founder, Jani A. Cañonero as Head of Team, and Jewe O. Manalo as SEO expert because those are the people on the public record. Strategy sits with Ben. Campaign delivery sits with the in-house team in Quezon City. That split belongs on the about page because it tells a buyer who they are hiring.
If the company is one person, say so. A sole trader who pretends to be a department looks worse than a small, honest shop.
Link people to author profiles when they write. A name that cannot be clicked is better than no name. A name that opens a profile with a bio, a location and the same photograph is better still.
Put The Firm On A Map
Location is a trust fact, not a keyword. Write the city you work from. If you serve other countries from that office, say that without building a fake branch network.
We work from Quezon City, Metro Manila, and take on English-language work in the Philippines and in other markets. We do not publish thin location pages for cities or countries where we do not operate an office. That rule exists because a rater who sees “London office” with a virtual mailbox and no staff will treat the about page as theatre.
If you are remote, say remote. If you meet clients on site, say the service area. Do not rent an address you never visit just to look local.
Keep the address consistent with the footer, the contact details, Google Business Profile, and any Organization or LocalBusiness markup. Entity reconciliation is unforgiving. One city in the about copy and another in schema looks like two firms.
Write History Without Myth
Founding stories go wrong when they become origin myths. “We saw a gap in the market” is not information. Dates, prior work, and the kind of clients you have actually served are information.
Ben founded the agency after more than fifteen years across technical SEO, content, local search and international campaigns, including ecommerce, SaaS, local businesses and larger firms in the UK and the United States. He holds a marketing degree from London Metropolitan University. Those are facts a stranger can test. “World-class innovation” is not.
Do not inflate tenure. Do not borrow another company’s client list. Do not claim industries you have never worked. If the early years were freelance work under a different trading name, say that rather than pretending the current brand is older than it is.
A short, dated timeline beats a lyric paragraph. Year founded, first market, current office, current services. Stop there if that is all you have.
Describe The Work, Not The Vibe
About pages love values. Values without work are filler.
State the jobs you take: technical SEO, content, local search, ecommerce, service-led campaigns, AI-search readiness, reporting tied to enquiries. State the jobs you refuse if that helps a buyer self-select. We do not sell guaranteed rankings or guaranteed inclusion in AI Overviews. We do not invent conversions to cover a tracking gap. Those limits belong near the about copy because they tell you what kind of firm you are dealing with.
Tie the work to commercial outcomes without fake numbers. Rankings, visibility and enquiries are the point. “Unlocking growth” is not a service.
If you have a method, describe it in operational language: analyse the site and the market, diagnose the constraint, implement the change, measure in Search Console, crawls, ranking tools and enquiry events. That is more useful than a four-pillar diagram.
Proof That Survives A Check
Awards, press logos and “as seen in” rows only help if they are real and current. A 2014 badge from a directory that no longer exists does not help. A logo wall of tools you log into is not press.
Better proof on an about page:
Named people with profiles. A physical or clearly described operating location. A company LinkedIn profile that matches the site. Reviews on a platform you do not control. Case studies written around the job and the market, not a stolen domain screenshot. Public editorial standards that say what you will and will not claim.
If you cannot show a case, do not invent one. If you cannot name a client, describe the problem and the method. We do not name client websites by default. Most businesses do not want their site used as our advertising.
Photographs of the actual office or the actual people beat stock. If you work from a small room, photograph that room or skip the office gallery. A rater has seen the rented WeWork shot before.
Match The Visible Page And The Markup
Whatever you put in Organization, LocalBusiness or Person schema must appear on the page. Markup that claims a founder, an address, a phone number or a credential the HTML does not show is a contradiction, not an enhancement.
Do not mark up fake employees. Do not add alumniOf for a university nobody attended. Do not attach reviews that are not visible. Schema is a machine-readable copy of the page, not a second, better company.
The same rule applies to the rest of the site. Service copy, author profiles and the about copy should tell one story. If Ben has fifteen-plus years on the about page, the author profile cannot say something else. If the team lives in Quezon City, contact details cannot pretend otherwise.
What To Cut
Mission statements that could sit on a toothpaste brand. “We” sentences that never name a person. Synonym piles of SEO, digital marketing, growth hacking and innovation. Client counts you cannot document. Awards you cannot link. Stock photography of unrelated offices. A video that says nothing the text did not already say, autoplaying with sound.
Cut until a stranger can repeat the firm back to you: name, people, city, services, how to reach you.
A Working Outline
Opening: who you are and what you sell, in two sentences, with the city. People: names, roles, photographs, links to profiles. History: dated, limited to facts you can defend. Work: services you deliver and the commercial job they support. Limits: what you will not claim or sell. Proof: reviews, methods, standards, not invented results. Contact: how to reach a person, with the same details used elsewhere.
That outline is enough for a one-person firm and a fifty-person firm. Scale the people section. Do not scale the adjectives.
How This Interacts With Search
Google does not rank you for having an about page. It uses the page, with the rest of the site and off-site reputation, to understand whether the content is associated with a real organisation that appears trustworthy.
For service queries that can affect money, health, safety or major life decisions, that understanding matters more. Even for ordinary trade queries, a missing about page makes every other claim cheaper.
The about page also feeds internal links and entity clarity. Author names, the organisation name and the city should appear in normal language, not as a keyword block. Link out to profiles, standards and contact as part of sentences that already needed those facts.
Common Service-Business Failures
The founder is named in the footer and nowhere else. The photograph is a LinkedIn headshot from a different decade than the rest of the site. The company claims global offices that are mail drops. The about copy was written by a vendor and still says “your agency name here” energy, even if the tokens were replaced. Staff listed on the page left two years ago. The page is a single paragraph under a hero that says Welcome.
Fix those before you commission a rewrite that adds more poetry.
Keep It Current
Set a reminder to review the about page when someone joins, leaves, or the office moves. A stale team grid is a trust defect. So is a founding year that changes after a rebrand.
When you correct a fact, change the page. Do not leave the error live because the old version ranked. Corrections are part of trust.
If a buyer still cannot tell who they would hire after reading the page, it is not finished. Send them to reach us only after the record itself is clear. Contact is a next step, not a substitute for identity.
