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.
800 Number vs. Local Phone
-
I have a client with multiple locations throughout the US. They are currently using different 800 numbers on their site for their different locations. As they try to optimize their local presence but submitting to local directories, we are trying to determine two things:
-
Does having a local number reroute to an 800 number devalue the significance of it being a local number (I've never heard of this, but someone told them it did)
-
Locality and consistency are important. Assuming they can't remove the 800 numbers from the site, are they better off keeping the 800 numbers on their site and using local numbers every else online OR just using the 800 numbers for all of their local listings?
-
-
Yup - even to capital letters...but, you are never going to get 100% perfection - and G knows that too - before we created our custom in-house citation and review tracking solution, we used to use just a simple spreadsheet; the first tab has your Google Places content exactly as it appears, then create a new tab for every citation - one tab group for existing citations that you may want to correct and one tab group for each new one that you create, always referring back to your GP tab as a reference.
We say internally that Google Places is like an onion - many layers, often stinks and sometimes just makes you cry
-
Thanks Keith, i did not realize citations counted all the way down to the "space" level. Some citations auto generate.
-
Hi Aspirant...
Regarding point #1, that is definitely a myth - we frequently secure local numbers and redirect these to call centres/800 numbers etc - we're sure that Google can closely associate a regular number with a geographic region, but until they start interrogating the Telco's (which I think even the Big G might struggle with) picking up a redirected number seems to be off their radar.
In relation to #2, according to our own research, experience, results and with a little help from David Mihm's "Local Search Ranking Factors" you need to honor the NAP "holy trinity" - consistency across all citations (including your clients' website numbers) for Name, Address and Phone is critical to success in local. Not just similar - exact right down to capitalization and spaces...so, if you can't change the 800 numbers (which would be better for Google Places but probably not ideal from a public/consumer perspective) then use the 800 numbers together with Address and Name everywhere - eventually Google will associate the 800 number with the geo location and you and your client will be happy.
Hope that helps...
-
1. I don't see how having the local number re-direct to the 1800 would be an issue, from an on-page SEO perspective. As long as Google is seeing the local area code that is consistent with the area you should be fine. For Google Maps there may be a different answer.
2. Why couldn't they remove the 800 number, or at least have both?
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
-
Structured data: Product vs auto rental schema?
Hi mozzers, If you are rental company, is it useful to add both the product and auto rental schemas or auto rental schema on its own should just be enough? Finally, on the auto rental schema, you have to add an address. Could we just add a city instead of an entire address and avoid receiving a warning message on the strutured data testing tool? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ty19860 -
Click To Reveal vs Rollover Navigation Better For Organic?
Hi, Any thoughts, data or insights as which is better in a top navigation... click to reveal the nav links or rollover to reveal the nav links? Regular content in an accordion (click to reveal) is evidently not best practice. Does that apply to navigation as well? Thanks! Best... Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
What's the best possible URL structure for a local search engine?
Hi Mozzers, I'm working at AskMe.com which is a local search engine in India i.e if you're standing somewhere & looking for the pizza joints nearby, we pick your current location and share the list of pizza outlets nearby along with ratings, reviews etc. about these outlets. Right now, our URL structure looks like www.askme.com/delhi/pizza-outlets for the city specific category pages (here, "Delhi" is the city name and "Pizza Outlets" is the category) and www.askme.com/delhi/pizza-outlets/in/saket for a category page in a particular area (here "Saket") in a city. The URL looks a little different if you're searching for something which is not a category (or not mapped to a category, in which case we 301 redirect you to the category page), it looks like www.askme.com/delhi/search/pizza-huts/in/saket if you're searching for pizza huts in Saket, Delhi as "pizza huts" is neither a category nor its mapped to any category. We're also dealing in ads & deals along with our very own e-commerce brand AskMeBazaar.com to make the better user experience and one stop shop for our customers. Now, we're working on URL restructure project and my question to you all SEO rockstars is, what can be the best possible URL structure we can have? Assume, we have kick-ass developers who can manage any given URL structure at backend.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | _nitman0 -
Description vs meta description
I have an e-commerce website and am trying to create product category pages. I am under the impression that Description is the text that would appear under the title on a google search and I believe the meta description is just what google reads? Is having BOTH important or just description? Is it ok to duplicate the description for the meta description? I know its not good to duplicate descriptions on other products and pages.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nchachula0 -
Silo vs breadcrumbs in 2015
Hi ive heard silos being mentioned in the past to help with rankings does this still apply? and what about breadcrumbs do i use them with the silo technique or instead of which ones do you think are better or should i not be using these anymore with the recent google updates?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | juun0 -
Unique domains vs. single domain for UGC sites?
Working on a client project - a UGC community that has a DTC model as well as a white label model. Is it categorically better to have them all under the same domain? Trying to figure which is better: XXX,XXX pages on one site vs. A smaller XXX,XXX pages on one site and XX,XXX pages on 10-20 other sites all pointing to the primary site. The thinking on the second was that those domains would likely achieve high DA as well as the primary, and would passing their value to the primary. Thoughts? Any other considerations we should be thinking about?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | intentionally0 -
Shopify Product Variants vs Separate Product Pages
Let's say I have 10 different models of hats, and each hat has 5 colors. I have two routes I could take: a) Make 50 separate product pages Pros: -Better usability for customer because they can shop for just masks of a specific color. We can sort our collections to only show our red hats. -Help SEO with specific kw title pages (red boston bruins hat vs boston bruins hat). Cons: -Duplicate Content: Hat model in one color will have almost identical description as the same hat in a different color (from a usability and consistency standpoint, we'd want to leave descriptions the same for identical products, switching out only the color) b) Have 10 products listed, each with 5 color variants Pros: -More elegant and organized -NO duplicate Content Cons: -Losing out on color specific search terms -Customer might look at our 'red hats' collection, but shopify will only show the 'default' image of the hat, which could be another color. That's not ideal for usability/conversions. Not sure which route to take. I'm sure other vendors must have faced this issue before. What are your thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | birchlore0 -
Number of Indexed Pages are Continuously Going Down
I am working on online retail stores. Initially, Google have indexed 10K+ pages of my website. I have checked number of indexed page before one week and pages were 8K+. Today, number of indexed pages are 7680. I can't understand why should it happen and How can fix it? I want to index maximum pages of my website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0