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.
Call Tracking, DNI Script & Local SEO
-
Hi Moz!
I've been reading about this a lot more lately - and it doesn't seem like there's exactly a method that Google (or other search engines) would consider to be "best practices". The closest I've come to getting some clarity are these Blumenthals articles - http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/05/14/a-guide-to-call-tracking-and-local/ & the follow-up piece from CallRail - http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/11/25/guide-to-using-call-tracking-for-local-search/.
Assuming a similar goal of using an existing phone number with a solid foundation in the local search ecosystem, and to create the ability to track how many calls are coming organically (not PPC or other paid platform) to the business directly from the website for an average SMB. For now, let's also assume we're also not interested in screening the calls, or evaluating customer interaction with the staff - I would love to hear from anyone who has implemented the DNI call tracking info for a website. Were there negative effects on Local SEO? Did the value of the information (# of calls/month) outweigh any local search conflicts?
If I was deploying this today, it seems like the blueprint for including DNI script, while mitigating risk for losing local search visibility might go something like this:
- Hire reputable call-tracking service, ensure DNI will match geographic area-code & be "clean" numbers
- Insert DNI script on key pages on site
- Maintain original phone number (non-DNI) on footer, within Schema & on Contact page of the site
- ??
- Profit
Ok, those last 2 bullet points aren't as important, but I would be curious where other marketers land on this issue, as I think there's not a general consensus at this point. Thanks everyone!
-
Hey Charlie - I realize this is a slightly old question post, but I am just now starting to dig into the details on this for my clients. One thing many of these articles that offer a 'solution' is failing to address is what number to actually put on your local search listing.
I understand DNI and as long as your website has your 'regular' static local number on the homepage, and you use the static number in all of your local SEO efforts - You should not see any penalties. I have many clients that use DNI and do not have an issue, plus I have read that Google can even read the javascript and see the number the DNI is replacing. The DNI is only useful if someone actually clicks past the initial search result to call - So basically, you may still only be getting partial data if someone does not click to your site but just rather calls the number in search results.
What my clients are now asking for, and I am pushing back on , is whether we can use separate call tracking numbers on separate Local SEO mediums. Here is an example -
Google: 800-555-1234
Facebook: 800-555-1235
Bing Places: 800-555-1236
This would still keep the static/owned number on the site - but show us who is calling from where. This would give good data in call tracking reports but from what I know and have researched, kills local SEO success due to NAP inconsistency.
-
Hi Charlie,
Mediahawk has written quite a good guide on local SEO and call tracking https://www.mediahawk.co.uk/blog/call-tracking-improves-local-seo/
The article says "You can use DNI numbers to control what number is displayed to a website visitor based on a countless range of conditions. This means the numbers for your social networks can display to those referred from social media rather than applying social media dedicated call tracking numbers to your updates".
I would suggest applying DNI to key web pages on a website for improved tracking.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you have anymore questions.
Zoe-Lee (user of call tracking)
-
Hi Charlie,
I'm sorry you haven't yet received any feedback yet on this question. Mike Blumenthal's writing on this topic (which you've already read) is as much as I personally know about on this, having never personally implemented a call tracking strategy for a local business. I'm hoping someone in our community will still reach out to you on this, but it may be that having read what you've read, you know as much as most folks on this topic. It may be you'll need to experiment to learn more.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Local SEO Over Optimization
We are targeting a bunch of services for our local business that works in and around their location. I'm concerned about over optimization and need some guidance on whether these points should be resolved. The company is based in a city and works mostly in the city but also in the surrounding areas. Currently, the site has 6 services pages (accessible via main nav) targeting the same location i.e. “Made Up Service London”, “Imaginary Service London” (with URLs and H1 tags etc. in place containing this location). However this is soon going to become 9 services pages, I am concerned that the repetition of this one location is starting to look spammy, especially as its where the company is based. Initially, I also wanted pages targeting the same services in other nearby areas. For example “Made Up Service Surrey”, “Imaginary Service Essex”. This has not happened as the info available has been too sporadic. I was going to add links to relevant case studies into these pages to beef up the content and add interest. To that end, we came up with case studies, but after a while, I noticed that these are also largely focused on the primary location. So out of 32 case studies, we have 19 focused on the primary location again with URL’s and H1 tags etc containing the location keyword. So in total, we have 25 pages optimized for the location (soon to be 28 and more if further case studies are added). My initial feeling was that the inclusion of pages targeting services in other locations would legitimize what we have done with the main pages. But obviously we have not got these pages in place and I question whether we ever will. What is my best course of action moving forward?
Local Website Optimization | | GrouchyKids1 -
Research on industries that are most competitive for SEO?
I am trying to see if there is a reputable / research-backed source that can show which industries are most competitive for search engine optimization. In particularly, I'd be interested in reports / research related to the residential real estate industry, which I believe based on anecdotal experience to be extremely competitive.
Local Website Optimization | | Kevin_P3 -
Local Business Schema Image requirement
Hello, I work exclusively with Dentists and we have been putting our json schema in the footer for a while now. Just recently they made 'image' a requirement for the Dentist category. We already use the logo in our schema and that is an image. Since the schema is in the footer, it is on every page, and the only image on every page is the logo. Does the image we add to our schema need to be on the actual web page or could it be anything related to the business, like an image of the practice or the dentist? Would it hurt to have the logo listed twice in the schema - once as the logo and once as the image? Trying to figure out what the best thing to do is for the required 'image' field for a dentist. Thanks! Angela
Local Website Optimization | | tntdental0 -
More pages on website better for SEO?
Hi all, Is creating more pages better for SEO? Of course the pages being valuable content. Is this because you want the user to spend as much time as possible on your site. A lot of my competitors websites seem to have more pages than mine and their domain authorities are higher, for example the services we provide are all on one page and for my competitors each services as its own page. Kind Regards, Aqib
Local Website Optimization | | SMCCoachHire0 -
Subdomain vs. Separate Domain for SEO & Google AdWords
We have a client who carries 4 product lines from different manufacturers under a singular domain name (www.companyname.com), and last fall, one of their manufacturers indicated that they needed to move to separate out one of those product lines from the rest, so we redesigned and relaunched as two separate sites - www.companyname.com and www.companynameseparateproduct.com (a newly-purchased domain). Since that time, their manufacturer has reneged their requirement to separate the product lines, but the client has been running both sites separately since they launched at the beginning of December 2016. Since that time, they have cannibalized their content strategy (effective February 2017) and hacked apart their PPC budget from both sites (effective April 2017), and are upset that their organic and paid traffic has correspondingly dropped from the original domain, and that the new domain hasn't continued to grow at the rate they would like it to (we did warn them, and they made the decision to move forward with the changes anyway). This past week, they decided to hire an in-house marketing manager, who is insisting that we move the newer domain (www.companynameseparateproduct.com) to become a subdomain on their original site (separateproduct.companyname.com). Our team has argued that making this change back 6 months into the life of the new site will hurt their SEO (especially if we have to 301 redirect all of the old content back again, without any new content regularly being added), which was corroborated with this article. We'd also have to kill the separate AdWords account and quality score associated with the ads in that account to move them back. We're currently looking for any extra insight or literature that we might be able to find that helps explain this to the client better - even if it is a little technical. (We're also open to finding out if this method of thinking is incorrect if things have changed!)
Local Website Optimization | | mkbeesto0 -
Can I block blexhn30.webmeup.com. Or does it have anything to do with my Moz Local
I am getting alot of hits from blexhn30.webmeup.com. My web host says it could be a web service. Is this part of moz local activity? Otherwise I want to block it. Have you seen this before??
Local Website Optimization | | stephenfishman0 -
Local Service pages guide?
There are a lots of Local landing pages guide on the internet. Is there any guide for Local service pages? How to create them, what to include?
Local Website Optimization | | Michael.Leonard0 -
Same blog, multiple languages. Got SEO concerns.
Hi, My company runs a small blog in swedish. Most of the visitors are our customers/prospects. We will write about generic concepts regarding our business and the occasional company news story. However, I have quite a few ideas for articles that could be interesting to a lot of people, and I'm tempted to write those in english for better exposure. I would love it if that exposure could boost my companies authority. How should I go on about this? Can I somehow tell search engines that a certain part or page of the site is in another language? Should I translate our entire site to english and post the english post in a separate blog feed? Any insight is welcome. Thanks in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | Mest0
