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Call Tracking

Does Call Tracking Really Hurt my Ranking?

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There has been quite a bit of discussion as to whether call tracking really does hurt a business’s local search results. Though this is not a cut and dry issue, from what I have seen it does hurt results for any of my local seo clients that have tried it.

Local search is still in its infancy and companies like Google are working hard to come up with valid and effective ways to rate the credibility of business listings found online. At this time, one of the most important factors is still consistency. Since matching a business’s name, phone number and address is one of the most important indicators of consistency, having multiple phone numbers for the same business confuses the search bots and leads to a lower ranking. Though this is not a perfect system and is likely to improve in the future, for now it’s the only one we have.

There are some things businesses can do to track their advertising success without resorting to call tracking. Though it has been temporarily discontinued (pending improvement one would think), Google previously offered a widget for websites that would connect a customer through the businesses Google voice number. This allowed businesses to determine from where the call originated. This isn’t a cure all since it only works for online advertising and probably only more advanced computer users will utilize the feature.

Another technique that many businesses are using that has proven effective is the use of coupons with special tracking codes. Each advertising source will have a coupon for a service with its own unique code that can easily be tracked. This approach has the added benefit of adding a way to attract customers. At the present time, if you really need to track customer origin, this is a good option.

Many marketing companies still insist that they can offer call tracking without affecting local search but, as of right now, I have never seen it work. As local search matures this will change. Also, Google and the other major search providers are constantly improving search algorithms and coming up with new ways to determine popularity and validity.

Call Tracking Can Kill Your Local SEO Results

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Local SEO Telephone Sheep

Sheep Made From German Phones – Courtesy Loop_Oh

Call tracking is an idea thought up by marketing companies to use as a tool to track which strategies are producing the most return on each advertising dollar.

The idea of call tracking is pretty simple.  A business sets up an account with a calling service that provides them with several different phone numbers that all ring at the business.  A different one of these phone numbers is then used for the business listing for each advertising source.  Once in place, the call system software can then monitor which numbers are calling the business with the most frequency and the owner will know immediately which advertising is paying off and which isn’t producing results.  This sounds like a good idea, but in the age of Google Local Business Listings and local seo it can have an adverse effect on page rankings.  Here’s why.

In traditional Search Engine Optimization for websites, the primary factor for determining page rank is the number of back links, or other sites that have links to the ranked site.  However for businesses, even extremely popular and reliable businesses may not have a web page to link back to.  This can skew the results and make a relatively unpopular business with a well optimized web page rank above a huge business without a site.  To correct for this, Google and other local search providers reduced the importance given to back links and instead rely on what are called citations.  Citations are simply a reference to the business somewhere in the vast world of cyber space.  A citation is something that lists the business’s name & phone number, name & address, or both.  In local SEO parlance this is called the name, address, phone number or NAP factor.  Are you beginning to see why having multiple numbers can be bad?

Local searches use what are called trust factors.  These are merely consistent indicators that a particular listing is legitimate and refers to what the engine thinks it does.  This makes having all of you business information standardized across the board.  Multiple numbers can confuse the engine and citations will be disregarded as unreliable.  In the world of local searches, a business’s NAP is how they are identified.  It’s the DNA of online business listings.

If a marketing company is telling you that call tracking is a good idea, then you might want to reconsider your company.  At least give them a pop quiz and make them tell you exactly how such a technique will not affect your local listings.  Be prepared for a song and dance.