Your About Page Is How AI Decides to Trust You

If ScoutRival’s Site Audit flagged “A real About page,” it means your /about page is missing, too thin, or so generic that a machine can’t learn anything trustworthy about you from it. The About page is easy to neglect — it feels like an obligatory formality — but it’s doing a specific, important job in the age of AI answers: it’s the page an engine reads when it needs to decide whether you’re a real, credible business worth recommending. This guide shows you how to turn a throwaway About page into a trust signal.

Why AI reads your About page

When someone asks an engine “who is Smith Roofing?” or “is Smith Roofing legit?” — or even when the model is quietly deciding whether to include you in a “best roofers in Austin” answer — it looks for grounding: real, verifiable facts about who you are. The About page is the natural home for those facts. It’s where a model expects to find the people, the history and the credentials that separate a real business from a thin affiliate site or a fly-by-night operation.

A weak About page fails that test. “We’re passionate about quality and committed to excellence” over a stock photo of a handshake tells a model nothing it can verify or trust. There’s no person, no date, no credential, no place — nothing to ground on. Practitioners consistently link thin About pages to non-recommendation: if the engine can’t establish that you’re a credible entity, the safer choice is to recommend the competitor whose About page proves it.

We grade this signal inferred, and we say so plainly. There’s no controlled experiment showing “expand your About page, get cited more.” But it aligns with everything AI demonstrably rewards — real people, real history, real expertise — and it maps directly onto Google’s E-E-A-T framework (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). For a local business, the About page is the most natural place to carry those signals.

What a trustworthy About page contains

Aim for at least 300 words of genuine substance — not padding, real information. The building blocks:

1. Who runs it. Real names and, ideally, real photos of the owner and key staff. “Founded by Jane Smith, a licensed master roofer” beats “our team of experts” every time.
2. When and why it started. “Family-owned since 2009” or “started after 15 years working for the largest contractor in the region.” A date and an origin story are concrete, verifiable facts.
3. Credentials and licenses. License numbers, certifications, professional memberships, insurance. These are the strongest expertise signals a local business has — and they’re checkable.
4. Service area. The cities and neighborhoods you actually serve, named explicitly.
5. Concrete differentiators. Not “quality and service” — specifics: “1,200+ roofs completed in the Austin metro,” “the only GAF Master Elite contractor in the county,” “10-year workmanship warranty.”

The pattern to notice: every one of these is a fact a model can hold onto, not an adjective. This is the same principle as replacing vague claims with specifics AI will cite — concrete, verifiable details give the engine something real to trust and quote.

How to build it

WordPress

1. Go to Pages → Add New (or edit your existing About page). Give it a clear title and the slug /about.
2. Lead with your who/what/where sentence — the same literal statement from your homepage hero: “[Business] is a [category] in [city] that [does what] for [who].” Then go deeper.
3. Structure it with headings (Heading blocks) — a short “Our story,” a “Meet the team” section with named people and photos, a “Credentials & licenses” list, and a “Where we work” service-area note.
4. Write real content into standard Gutenberg blocks (paragraphs, headings, lists) so it ships as readable HTML — not into a dynamic widget that injects text after load.
5. Link it in the nav. Go to Appearance → Menus and make sure About is in the main navigation, and add it to the footer menu too, so both people and crawlers can reach it.

Wix, Squarespace, Webflow

Create or edit the About page in the page editor, and use real text and image elements (not text baked into images). Add it to the site’s main navigation menu and footer. On all three, the structure — story, named team, credentials, service area — is the same; only the editor differs.

Shopify

Even a store benefits from a real About page. Create it under Online Store → Pages, write genuine founder/brand history and credentials, and add it to your main menu under Online Store → Navigation.

Any platform

The rules are platform-independent: one genuine About page, 300+ words, real people and history and credentials, written as readable text, and linked from the main navigation.

Write it honestly

One caution that matters: don’t invent the credibility. An About page works because its facts are real and checkable. Fabricated credentials, a made-up founding date, or fake staff photos don’t just risk trust — they can actively harm you if an engine cross-references and finds the claim doesn’t hold up. If you’re a two-year-old business, “founded in 2024” is a perfectly good, trustworthy fact. Depth comes from being specific and true, not from inflating.

How to confirm it’s fixed

1. Visit yoursite.com/about — it should exist and load real content.
2. Check the substance: does it name real people, state when/why you started, list credentials or licenses, and name your service area? Is it more than ~150 words of genuine information?
3. Confirm it’s reachable from the main navigation (not an orphan page only findable by URL).
4. View Source and confirm the About text is readable HTML, not injected by a widget after load.
5. Re-run your ScoutRival Site Audit. The About-page check clears once the page exists with real substance and is linked in your nav.

Common mistakes to avoid

• The two-sentence stock-photo About. “We’re passionate about excellence” over a handshake photo gives a model nothing. Add people, dates and credentials.
• Hiding real people behind “our team.” Named individuals with photos are far stronger E-E-A-T than an anonymous collective. Name the owner at minimum.
• Adjectives instead of facts. “Trusted, reliable, premier” are unverifiable. “Licensed since 2011, 1,200+ projects, 4.9 stars across 300 reviews” are facts a model can trust.
• An orphan About page. If it’s not linked from your nav and footer, crawlers may not find it and visitors won’t either. Link it.
• Baking the text into an image. A designed “about us” graphic with the copy inside it is invisible to AI. Use real text.
• Inventing credentials. Only claim what’s true and checkable. Fabricated facts can be cross-referenced and will erode trust rather than build it.

The bottom line

Your About page is where an AI goes to decide whether you’re a real, credible business worth recommending — and a thin one quietly loses you that decision. Give it 300+ words of genuine substance: real people, a real start date, real credentials, your real service area, and specific differentiators. Lead with your who/what/where sentence, write it as readable text, link it in your nav, and keep every claim true. It’s one page, and it’s carrying more trust weight than almost anything else on your site.

Want to know whether your About page reads as credible to a machine? Run a free Site Audit with ScoutRival — and if you need a hand, it can draft an honest, structured About page for you to review and fill in with your real details.