Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How will changing the phone number on my website affect SEO?
-
We are considering changing the phone number to our website to one of those 1-800-eat-cows. How will changing a phone number we've had 10 years affect our SEO. Do we need to change all citations, Google maps, etc etc? What if we don't? Thanks!
-
You're welcome! Have a nice afternoon.
-
It looks like this issue has been resolved within my company. The phone number did not change for citations, header, footer. It did however change within the content, which I know is inconsistent and not the best, but I have no control over. Thanks for the input.
-
Hey RoxBox,
Thanks for the reply. I want to start by saying that I am only a fan of vanity phone numbers for a really limited number of scenarios: radio ads, TV ads and billboards. Beyond that, I am just not a fan. Here are some reasons:
-
You don't want to use a vanity number on your local business listings because some won't accept letters instead of numbers, and there's a serious question as to whether clicks-to-call might get hammered, too.
-
Unless your consumer base is all really young folks with perfect eyesight, vanity numbers make things unnecessarily difficult for consumers trying to see the tiny letters on a mobile phone's number pad, and even on a landline pad. I've had my phone disconnect while I've hunted around for the letter Q, for example. So, vanity numbers really aren't consumer-friendly.
So, if the business is determined to have a vanity number, I would advise them to use it only for specific advertising scenarios (like a radio ad). And if they want to connect that radio ad to UX on the website, go ahead and put it in an image in the website masthead. But keep it separate from the pure text-based NAP of the business, whether that features a toll free or local phone number. Never make a vanity number the only option for a local business. They just aren't well-liked, according to an informal poll I took of some Local SEO colleagues.
Hope this helps!
-
-
The phone number on the header of the website would change to the vanity # without the vanity (just use #'s). Throughout the site content it would change to vanity. But it would go from 888 to 855, which is not good for toll free according to one of the articles you posted.
-
Hey RoxBox,
Just want to be sure you've seen my follow-up question
-
Hey There!
Are you saying you are considering changing a number phone number for a vanity number (letters instead of numbers?). I just want to be sure I'm understanding correctly. Thanks!
-
I've seen it advised that you should not use letters - so 1-800-eat-cows would be less optimal than 1-800-328-2697. I don't know if it's true from an SEO standpoint, but it's certainly true from a usability perspective. Customers do not enjoy having to translate letters into numbers, especially anyone who is even slightly visually impaired. Takes forever.
-
There’s no problem with changing your phone number as long as you change it EVERYWHERE. NAP (name, address, phone number) is a very important part of SEO. Why? Well, search engines like Google take this data into account when determining which cities to show for geo-targeted searches. Some local SEO experts believe that Google and other top search engines cross-reference your NAP info across a variety of websites to ensure your business is legitimate. Long story short: make sure your phone number is consistent across the board. Hope that was helpful!
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What do I need to do for SEO when moving a business out of state?
Hello! So I have a business that I run out of a single location for the last 3 years. I am unfortunately having to move here in the next few weeks My question is what do I need to do in order to have the best chance at SEO for the new location? When should I make the changes? Does it take a long time for me to stop showing up in the previous location? and is there something I need to do to remove those? Also, is there an app or a website where I can find and update all listings at once or at least a bulk of them? I know that there are some weird sites that have my business info in them that I did not put there. Obviously these would have the wrong address. Some do not have a contact info or a way for me to log into them. What would I do with these sites? Thank you!
Local Listings | | Rmarkjr810 -
Adding Schema to multi-location Wordpress Website using Schema Pro
All, we're building a new version of our existing website using Wordpress and have both Yoast SEO Premium and Schema Pro installed. Our site has 70, a medical practice, has 70 different locations. Each one of our locations has a page tile like the following: "Los Angeles | ABC Dental". The first part of the site title is the town we're located in followed by our site name. Using Schema Pro, we're not sure about what to place into the "Name" field. You can see the direction from Schema Pro for local businesses here, https://wpschema.com/docs/add-schema-markup-for-a-local-business-page/ By default Schema Pro has the name field set to Site Title. However, using this on all 70 or our landing pages wouldn't provide the local aspect we want. It would just say ABC Dental. We changed this to use a new custom field where we could enter a more descriptive name. Using our page title example of "Los Angeles | ABC Dental", would we simply enter this into the name field of Schema Pro? If not, would we format this another way such as "ABC Dental Los Angeles" We could use some help in a strategy for Schema markup for multi-location businesses, in particular, the name field. All other information such as address, phone number, etc seems rather straight forward. Thank you for the assistance
Local Listings | | morciuoli0 -
Tracking Phone Numbers in Google My Business Listings and Beyond
Hey all, Wanted to run something by you. I am getting pressed to use tracking phone numbers for all of our GMB pages for over 100 locations across the country. Has anyone done this for their own listings or for their clients? Because I will have to do it for GMB, this means I will be sending these same phone numbers out to the other major directories and data sources around the web. The phone numbers do contain the local area code for each city and do directly connect our customers to their specific location without any kind of redirecting. How is Google looking at this? I have read before it is a no-no but have also read it is not a big deal. Any thoughts would be much appreciated! -Ben
Local Listings | | Davey_Tree0 -
Is SEO effect of NAP Inconsistency A Hoax?
Is the effect of NAP inconsistency on search rankings basically a myth to justify business citation management services? I've been doing SEO for over 10 years but only recently started doing local businesses. I have yet to find any sort of published study that clearly shows a significant ranking effect by correcting an inconsistent NAP on any business directory site other than Google and Bing Business Listings. In fact, the publishers of any such articles claiming NAP inconsistency has a significant negative SEO effect are almost always businesses or people that are charging for such services. Gee, could they be a little biased? Obviously if you have an incorrect address that is far from the actual address, correcting it will help your ranking (think 3-pack) in the area close to your business but that's not really the type of ranking effect I'm talking about here. I'm talking about a missing suite #, or an old address that is 1/2 block away from the new address but still the same phone number, or identical address but different phone (a toll free versus a local number). That kind of stuff. Of course you don't want to have an incorrect address or non-working phone number on places like Superpages, Yelp, Yellowpages, etc, but does anyone know of any place I can find good factual proof that having inconsistent NAPs on these sites has any significant effect on rankings? I'm sure some of the big SEO companies have the data to determine the effect. Or is this more of a "tin foil hat" / herd / OCD mentality on this subject that no one can prove (or disprove?)
Local Listings | | MrSem0 -
[Local Search] Do you get penalized by using a Google Voice number for each seperate business location?
My client is expanding and opening up separate locations and I will be getting all their online business listings up and running. The client wants to use a single 1-888 number for all locations, however, it was my assumption that they would need a local number for each location to improve their ranking. Could I suggest using free Google voice numbers that get forwarded to their 1-888 number or will Google discredit us for this?
Local Listings | | aedesignco0 -
Do you need contact details (NAP) on every page of your website for local search ranking ?
We’ve got a clients site which doesn't have the contact details on every page, all the contact details are on the /contact page which is using the schema.org local business markup Some sites that our outranking us locally have their contact details on all pages, where as others only have it on the contact page also. Is having your contact details on every page a ranking factor for local search ?
Local Listings | | mike8780 -
Google My Business- Will a large service area dilute local search results?
I am considering adding our actual service area to our Google My Business profile, but I don't want this to dilute our local search results. As it is, we come up in the top 3 or so when searched in our HQ's city and several nearby cities when you search for us in Google Maps (although when I look at the top 10 organic for Google for some reason when you search for these cities + our keywords Google doesn't show any local results). Our actual service area is fairly large, comprising the states of CA & Hawaii & parts of CO, AZ, and UT. I would be adding the service area by zip code rather than radius, as a radius wouldn't make any sense in this case (particularly considering the distance between HI and CA). Is it better to keep our relatively high ranking in local results? Will adding the service area not affect local results negatively? Also, do you know why Google isn't showing me local results when I look for our keywords + our nearby cities? When I look for these keywords in larger cities like LA or San Diego, Google always shows me local results.
Local Listings | | BohmKalish1230 -
2 businesses same phone number
I was wondering how I should approach a scenario where I am optimizing two different companies websites that have the same phone number but different addresses. This sounds like a weird scenario, however it is out of my control. Is treating them as two separate companies fine, or do I have to take special precautions when submitting business directories and what not? Thanks for everyone's help! As a side note, is their a way to use Moz Local with both companies, right now it is getting confused as to what business belongs to what listing.
Local Listings | | brfieger0