3 Common “About Us” Page Mistakes

As a copywriter, one of the more common assignments I get from clients is helping them rewrite the About Us page for their company’s website. Over the years, I’ve noticed that companies make a few common mistakes when it comes to this all-important page,

Why is this page important?

After the home page, the About Us page is often the reason why someone will consider doing business with you. It must be written in a way that persuades your prospect to call.

Here are 3 three common mistakes people make on the About Us page, and what you can do to correct them:

1. Too much info – The About Us page should not read like “War and Peace.” Keep the content clear and consise. 300-400 words should be plenty to convey who you are, who your target audience is and why someone should do business with YOU!  If you attend networking events, use your 30-60 second elevator speech as a guide.

2. It’s all about YOU – While your About Us page does need to talk about you, don’t mistake that to mean that’s all you talk about! This is not your resume. We don’t need to know the awards you won in high school or college, unless they are relevant to your profession today!

3. No Value Proposition – Remember, people want to know “what’s in it for me.” Your About Us page needs to explain WHY someone should buy from you. What are the benefits your product or service offers? If you don’t offer people something of value, they’re not going to do business with you.

About Us Template

Here are 6 elements that your About Us page should contain to be an effective marketing element of your website:

1.  Answers question, “What do you do?” – The first sentence should be clear and to the point. Example: “I am an expert in…”

2. Answers question, “Who do you serve?” – State who your ideal client is. If you specialize in a certain niche, say so.

3. Professional accomplishments – Don’t go overboard here, but do mention the most important element that backs up what you do.

4. Credibility boosters – Mention any awards, certifications or memberships.

5. Past Projects – Briefly detail any past projects and work that set you apart from your peers.

6. Innovations – List anything novel or innovative that you’re doing in your niche that makes you more attractive to your target audience.

 

3 Common SEO Mistakes and How to Fix Them

By Gloria Rand
Worrying about the latest algorithm change from Google won’t make a difference to your website’s search ranking if you’ve made a common SEO mistake like optimizing for common words or using your company name as the title tag for every page on your website. Here are three other SEO mistakes to avoid, and how to fix them:

How to Stand Out in Business

Source: Freedigitalphotos.net

If you’re a business owner, odds are that when you were first starting out, you wondered how you would ever stand out from the competition. Even if you’ve been in business for several years, and have reached some level of success, I’d hazard a guess you still feel that way from time to time.

8 Core Elements of Successful Business Blogs

[tweetmeme]You might think that writing a blog for your business is passé in today’s Facebook era.  But you’d be wrong. Consider these statistics:

• 51% of Internet users read a blog at least monthly and over 60% are expected to do the same by 2014 (Technorati)
• Companies that have a business blog attract 55% more website visitors than non-blogging companies (Hubspot)
• More than 43% of U.S. companies will  market via a blog by 2012, up from 34% in 2010 (eMarketer)

I attended a webinar yesterday featuring Rick Calvert & Dave Cynkin, the co-founders of Blog World & New Media Expo, and Michael Stelzner of White Paper Source. The webinar featured 9 businesses (B2B & B2C) that are doing blogging right.

My takeaway from the webinar was that in order to have a successful blog for your business, you need to focus on these 8 core elements:

1. Get creative with your blog theme. Tailor your theme to your target audience and don’t be afraid to show your personality.

2. Create value for your readers. Provide information in your blog that is important to your target audience. Don’t “sell, sell, sell” your products or services.  Your blog can subtly advertise, but don’t make it your primary purpose.

3. Wow your audience with impeccable branding & design. Be consistent with your company’s image. It will allow you to strengthen your brand with target audience. Consider your target audience. If they skew older, make the site easy to read with bigger fonts – easy to read backgrounds.

4. Exceed your audience’s expectations with great content.  Great content will be very valuable to your readers.

5. Mix up your content topics and delivery methods. Use photos, videos along with text to make the subject matter compelling and interesting to your reader.

6. Become the “go-to” source to build loyal followers. Make your posts interesting so your readers consider the site their “go to” place for quality information. Use compelling & engaging graphics, and keep targeting the interests of your audience even if it doesn’t have anything to do with the product or service you sell.

7. Use a broad range of contributors. Don’t rely solely on your employees (or yourself) as the main contributor to your blog. Ask outside experts to write articles. Their participation will add enormous credibility to your blog, and provide an implied endorsement of your company.

8. Make your blog “social.” Integrate your blog with other social media platforms. Make it easy for readers to share your blog articles on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc.

If you have any other suggestions on how to make a successful blog for your business, please comment below! 🙂

Google Shuns Keyword Meta Tags

Do you spend a lot of time researching words and phrases to include in your website’s keyword meta tag?  If so, you may want to put a brake on your efforts.  At least, if you only care about optimizing your website for Google. 

In a video released earlier this week, the popular search engine said it does not use the keyword meta tag for ranking purposes.  Period. End of story.

Once upon a time, using the keyword meta tag was a great way to insure search engines would find your site. But then people started loading up the keyword meta tags with words – related or unrelated to the site’s content – just to get noticed.  The repetition of words in the meta tag is probably why Google doesn’t focus on it anymore.  The search engine is more concerned with the actual content on your site and how relevant it  is  to your target audience.

Just because Google isn’t focusing on the keyword meta tag doesn’t mean you should ignore other meta tags. Google still pays attention to the description meta tag. This is a great place for you to use keywords to describe what a particular web page is about, and include a call to action.

You don’t have to ignore the keywords meta tag altogether. You can still put some keywords and phrases here because other search engines like Yahoo still use it.  But it’s more important to have two or three keywords/phrases per web page, and write content in a way that it engages your reader and encourages them to move through your site and take action. That way you can be sure Google and your potential customers will take notice.