Write an effective About page for your blog

Q. I’m pretty sure my ‘About’ pages needs beefing up. What should I include?

A. Your instinct to craft a hard-working ‘About’ page is a good one. While your blog design and layout should provide opportunities to communicate the scope and purpose of your blog, you can also maximize the ‘About’ page opportunity for better search engine results and reader clarification.

Here are some important elements:

1. Include a statement about your blog’s key purpose. This is your chance to provide the full explanation of who your blog is for and what it will cover. This description should build on the title and tagline found elsewhere on the blog. Use appropriate keywords and search terms in a natural (not stilted) way, and search engines will pick up the page and bring readers to you.

2. Give a little background about how you got started - what was the impetus for launching the blog? Again, use keywords and search phrases common to your topic in a natural, conversational way.

3. Give a little background about yourself personally. You don’t have to give away more personal details than you’re comfortable sharing, but you can probably include your home city and any notes about your professional experience or education that are relevant to your blog topic. Resist the urge to write in third person (“Dan Smith is a writer and blogger living in…”) – write in the first person so your readers can get to know you.

4. Invite people to contact you via email. You’d be surprised how many bloggers fail to provide a way to contact them outside of the comments or an impersonal form. This is one of the reasons why I love free email addresses like those provided by Yahoo! or Hotmail - you can set one up just for your blogging and social media site registrations, separate from your regular home email account, so any spam that comes as a result doesn’t clutter your “official” in-box.

5. Include a photo of you if at all possible – it’s far more personal and lends credibility to the blog if readers can put a face with the name.