Who Wrote This, and Why Should I Believe Them

The question underneath the reading

Somebody reading advice about a decision they are about to make is doing two things at once.

Reading the advice, and working out whether to trust it.

The second is usually unconscious and it decides whether they act, and it is answered by whatever the page says about who is speaking.

On most small business sites the answer is nothing at all, and the advice is weighed accordingly.

What an unattributed page communicates

Not dishonesty, and not much of anything, which is the problem.

A page written in a corporate voice, with no name attached, could have been written by the owner with twenty years in the trade or by somebody paid to produce it who has never done the work.

A reader cannot distinguish those, so they discount both to the same degree.

Which means the business with real experience gets no credit for it, having chosen a format that conceals it.

That is a self-inflicted cost and it is free to remove.

What to attach

• A name, on anything advisory.
• One line saying what qualifies them.
• A photograph, small, at the top or bottom.
• A link to a page about that person.
• A date, or a last-reviewed date.

The second matters more than the credential itself. Twenty-two years installing these is a stronger line than any qualification, and most trades have something equivalent that is never stated.

Qualification is not the same as credentials

Worth separating, since businesses assume they have nothing to say here.

A formal qualification is one kind of answer and frequently the weakest available.

Stronger ones: how long you have been doing it, how many you have done, what you did before, what you specialise in, and what you have seen go wrong.

Fourteen years and about nine hundred of these tells a reader more than a certificate name they do not recognise.

For a trade, the years and the volume are the credential, and the reason they are rarely stated is that they feel unremarkable to the person who has them.

They are not unremarkable to somebody deciding whether to take your advice about their house.

A worked example

A business had eleven advisory pages, all written in an anonymous corporate voice by the owner.

He added a two-line block at the foot of each: his name, that he had been in the trade since 2004 and had run the business since 2011, and a small photograph linking to the about page.

The about page was expanded to say what he had done before, what he specialised in, and what he did not take on.

Nothing else changed on any of the pages.

Enquiries began referring to him by name before any conversation had taken place, and two mentioned that they had read something he had written.

The work took an afternoon and the material had all existed.

Where it matters most

Not on every page, which is worth being clear about.

Anything advisory, where a reader might act on what you say: how to choose, what to check, whether to repair or replace, what something should cost.

Anything where being wrong has consequences: safety, money, legal, health.

And anything comparing options, since a comparison is only as good as the judgement behind it.

A service page describing what you do needs no byline, since the business is the author and that is understood.

The distinction is between describing your work and offering guidance, and only the second raises the question.

The page it links to

Since a name with nothing behind it is barely better than no name.

The linked page should say what a reader wants to know about somebody giving advice: how long, what background, what specialism, and what they will not advise on.

That last item does the most work, for the same reason it does on an about page: somebody who names the limits of their knowledge is more credible within them.

Keep it short and specific, and avoid a biography, which nobody reads and which dilutes the three facts that matter.

One page serves every byline on the site, so this is a single piece of work rather than an ongoing one.

Where more than one person writes

A practical note for businesses with several people.

Attribute to whoever actually knows the subject rather than to whoever typed it, since the byline is a claim about knowledge rather than about authorship.

Where a writer worked from an interview, the person interviewed is the one whose name belongs on it, and saying so is honest.

Where nobody in the business knows the subject, that is worth noticing before publishing rather than solving with a byline.

Keep the attribution consistent, since a page attributed to three different people over two years reads as uncertain about its own authorship.

The same name everywhere

A consistency point that decides whether any of this accumulates.

The name on the advisory pages should be the name in the email signature, on the quote, in the voicemail greeting, and replying to reviews.

Somebody who reads a page, then receives a quote from a different name, has learned nothing about either.

Where the business posts on social accounts or appears in a local group, the same name and photograph should be attached there too.

Recognition is built by repetition across channels, and a business using four different presentations of itself is starting again in each one.

The counter-case

Not everybody wants their name on the internet.

That is a legitimate position, particularly for anybody who has experienced harassment or works in a sensitive field.

A first name, or the business owner's name on everything regardless of who wrote it, both work and both are better than nothing.

There is also a version of this that becomes elaborate: author boxes, credential lists, and biographies on pages where nobody was asking.

Put a name and a line of qualification on advisory pages, link to one page about that person, and leave the rest alone.

What to do

1. List the advisory pages on your site.
2. Put a name on each.
3. Add one line of qualification.
4. Use years and volume, not certificates.
5. Link to one page about that person.
6. Say what they will not advise on.
7. Attribute to who knows, not who typed.

Step four is the one businesses skip because their own experience feels ordinary to them, and it is the strongest thing most of them could say.

Getting that experience into the writing is covered in content written by somebody who was not there.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.