There's a weird disconnect in how developers think about SEO.
We obsess over meta tags, structured data, Core Web Vitals, backlinks. All important stuff. But then we slap together an About page in five minutes and call it done.
Here's the thing: Google's been getting smarter about figuring out who's behind a website. And the pages most developers ignore are often the ones that matter most for establishing trust.
Why trust pages exist
Google has a concept they call E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It sounds like corporate jargon, but the idea is simple: Google wants to know if the people behind a website actually know what they're talking about.
This matters more for some sites than others. Medical advice? Google cares a lot. Random meme blog? Probably not as much. But if you're building anything where people make decisions based on your content (product reviews, financial tools, educational resources). Trust signals become important.
And where does Google look for these signals? Not your homepage hero section. Not your fancy animations.
Your About page. Your Contact page. The boring stuff.
What actually goes on an About page
Most About pages I see from developers fall into two categories:
Category 1: The ghost ship
About Us
Welcome to our website. We provide quality content.
Contact us for more information.
This tells Google nothing. It tells visitors nothing. It might as well not exist.
Category 2: The novel
Seventeen paragraphs about your journey, your mission statement, your core values, your favorite programming language, and why you started this project at 2 AM after a bad day at work.
Nobody reads this. Google doesn't need your life story.
What works:
A clear statement of who you are (person or company), what you do, and why anyone should trust you on this topic. If you have relevant experience, say so. If you've been doing this for a while, mention it. If there are real humans behind the site, show that.
I've been building a tech review site and spent way more time on the About page than I expected. Not because I wanted to, but because I realized it was the one page where I could directly address why anyone should listen to my opinions on products. You can see how I approached it on our about page.
The key was being specific without being overwhelming. Credentials matter, but so does brevity.
Contact information signals legitimacy
This one surprises people: having visible contact information is a trust signal.
Think about it from Google's perspective. Scam sites and content farms don't want to be contacted. They want to rank, grab ad revenue, and disappear. Legitimate businesses and creators are reachable.
You don't need to publish your home address. But having:
- A working email address
- A contact form that actually works
- Links to real social profiles
...all signal that there's a real entity behind the website.
I've seen sites lose rankings after removing their contact page during a redesign. Correlation isn't causation, but it's happened enough times that I don't mess with contact pages anymore.
The pages nobody talks about
Privacy policies and terms of service aren't exciting. But their presence matters.
Not because Google reads the legal text—they probably don't. But because legitimate websites have them and sketchy ones often don't. It's a pattern recognition thing.
If you're running any kind of business site, affiliate site, or collecting user data, these pages should exist. They don't need to be custom-written by lawyers for a small project. There are generators that produce perfectly adequate versions. Just have something.
Schema markup for trust
Here's where we get slightly technical.
Google has structured data types specifically designed to tell search engines who's behind a website:
- Organization schema: Company name, logo, social profiles, contact info
- Person schema: For individual creators
- LocalBusiness schema: For brick-and-mortar businesses
Adding these to your site creates explicit connections between your website and your real-world identity. Google can then cross-reference this with other signals across the web.
Is your business name on Crunchbase? LinkedIn? Industry directories? Schema markup helps Google connect those dots.
{
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "Your Company",
"url": "https://yoursite.com",
"sameAs": [
"https://linkedin.com/company/yourcompany",
"https://twitter.com/yourcompany"
]
}
The sameAs property is particularly useful—it explicitly tells Google "these profiles are all the same entity."
The uncomfortable truth about trust
You can't fake trust signals long-term.
You can add all the right pages and schema markup, but if there's no real expertise behind your content, it eventually shows. Google's getting better at detecting thin content, AI-generated filler, and sites that exist purely to rank.
The good news: if you're building something real, establishing trust is mostly about not hiding. Show who you are. Make it easy to verify. Don't be anonymous when you don't need to be.
Trust pages aren't about gaming an algorithm. They're about making it easy for both Google and visitors to understand who they're dealing with.
Quick checklist
Before you ship your next project:
- About page explains who's behind the site and why they're credible
- Contact page has working email or form
- Privacy policy exists (especially if collecting any data)
- Organization/Person schema is implemented
- Social profiles are linked and consistent
- Real human names appear somewhere (if appropriate)
None of this is hard. It just gets deprioritized because it's not as fun as building features. But when you're wondering why your technically excellent site isn't ranking... maybe check the boring pages first.
This is part of a series on the non-obvious parts of SEO. The companion piece on why your About page might matter more than your homepage is now live.
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