Google’s John Mueller answered a question about whether it’s true that adding a “contact page” and/or and “about page” was a good idea because it’s important to Google. Mueller checked around and said why the contact and about us pages were useful.
Needs To Convince Company To Add Contact & About Us Pages
@jaclynbrandt tweeted a question to John Mueller, explaining that they were trying to convince the company they worked for that adding contact and about us pages and needed a statement or information to show them why they should add those pages.
They tweeted:
“@JohnMu I am trying to convince my company to add a contact us and/or about us page to our website. We are an online directory/blog for a niche sport (but run by a ecommerce company in that sport). Do you have any tips I can present to them as to why it’s important?”
John Mueller asked if it was because they wanted feedback from users and suggested that they check with their users.
The person asking the question responded that they wanted to do it because they heard it’s important to Google that a company have those pages.
They tweeted:
“Nope! No need for feedback (there are other ways to do this). I have just heard it’s important to Google – but I can’t find any documentation on this.”
And added:
“And yes I know I should not do anything just because Google wants it – I generally stay away from that and just try to be helpful. But I have heard this is a make or break rule.”
Are Contact & About Us Pages Important To Google?
It’s not an unreasonable question to ask if an about us or contact page is important. Google’s Quality Raters Guidelines specifically tell raters that it should be clear who is responsible for the website.
The guidelines (PDF) explain on page 25:
“In determining page quality, Raters must consider EEAT:
The first-hand experience of the creator.
The expertise of the creator.
The authoritativeness of the creator, the main content itself and the website.”
All of the above considerations cannot be confirmed by the quality raters if there is no documentation on the webpage about who is responsible for the website, which is information that could be found on an about page.
The page quality section continues:
“Raters determine a page quality rating by:
…Reviewing the information available about the website and its creator: It should be clear who is responsible for the website and who created the content on the page, even if through an alias or username.”
Identifying who is responsible for a webpage is easier when there’s an about page that explains who are the people responsible for the website and why site visitors should trust them. This is information that is, for the purposes of rating websites, directly linked to E-E-A-T in the quality raters guidelines.
John Mueller Answers The Question
Mueller responded to the question as to whether having a contact and about us page is a make or break rule at Google and that it’s important to have those pages on a website.
He tweeted his response:
“I can think of good reasons for some sites to have these kinds of pages, but, after double-checking, there’s nothing in our search developer documentation that suggests this is needed.”
About Us & Contact Pages
There’s a lot of things that people feel are “important to Google” that really aren’t important. For example, recipe bloggers have long understood that having lots of content is important for ranking in Google. Even recipe blogger SEOs insisted on this to me – even though there is no documentation or Googler statement that confirms that.
And the reality is that the length of content is not a ranking factor or an influence on ranking, it simply doesn’t matter to Google. The only thing that matters is if it’s useful or helpful and offers a good and satisfying experience for users.
Similarly the thing about contact and about us pages is that Google doesn’t care about those either, they’re not “important” to Google or required.
But they are important if you want to communicate to site visitors that the people responsible for the site aren’t affiliates with zero expertise. Even for the sake of conversions, getting people to return to the site to click on ads or buy more stuff, it’s important to earn their trust and confidence.
So if a company needs convincing then maybe the argument that it’ll help you make more money might be a good argument as any because if people are buying more stuff, clicking on affiliate ads or increasing ad impressions then that’s a sign that people trust the site as well.
The user experience is a money-earning-thing and it could have a downstream effect but that’s not a direct thing, even if it’s important to the quality raters.
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Dean Drobot
