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Chapter 7

Will It Affect My SEO?

Will call tracking affect my SEO?

Let's set the record straight on where call tracking might affect your SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and where it will not!

Hundreds of thousands of marketers across the world use call tracking to track the calls produced by their digital marketing. That list includes most of the enterprise Fortune 100 companies and their esteemed marketing agencies.

Still, rumors and fears continue to circulate in regards to call tracking and its effect on your search engine standing.

First, let's look at where you should be careful with call tracking numbers.

Google uses a combination of business name, address and phone number (NAP) to verify business listings for Google Maps and Google Places. To do so, it checks the listing across multiple sources on the web, including major local listing providers such as InfoUSA and Localeze. Luckily, there's a simple way to take advantage of all the benefits of call tracking while still providing a consistent NAP presence to Google.

You should be using you actual business phone number as your Primary ID in your Google profile. Google and the other major local listing providers all allow for secondary numbers, and this is where you can place your tracking lines. The guidance that they specifically provide is to refrain from using numbers that "refer" users to somewhere other than you actual business. As long as you are using numbers that ring to your actual business (Primary ID) you are absolutely fine.

For tracking your main website, you should be using dynamic website call tracking! With dynamic website call tracking, a simple java script code will rotate the phone number shown to each visitor to your site. When the search engines use their "spiders" or "bots" to "crawl" the site and assess its content and ranking, they won't see the new number. They are only crawling the code of the site, where the tracking number remains static. To feel even more secure, you can use your primary number in the code of your site. This number will never be seen or called by visitors, but it's the only number the search engine will see, meaning that there will be zero impact to your SEO ranking.

Another good practice we recommend is placing your primary number down in the footer of your page where the Google bots can read it. This has next to zero impact on your marketing data, and keeps the NAP police happy.

Finally, remember these points:

  1. Google is very aware of call tracking.
  2. The only time Google has spoken on record about call tracking, it has been to acknowledge the value and need.
  3. Google has publicly partnered (through DoubleClick) with four call tracking providers (including Century Interactive!) to allow marketers to track call conversions directly within the DoubleClick platform.

Chapter 8: What If I Get A Lot Of Calls? >