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.
Phone number for SEO
-
We have had an interesting question from a client. They have asked if removing their phone number from their website would have an affect on their rankings. Our immediate answer was 'No' but it may affect the Brand, Usability and Customer experience by restricting the methods of contact. This then made us think that perhaps then it could have an effect in the long term. This situation is also complicated by the fact that they do not have a Google Local Plus account for operational, sensitivity reasons (they don't want to openly publicise their address)
We believe that there shouldn't be any negative affect but thought we would open a discussion. Thanks in advance for any comments/ideas.
-
Thanks for the responses. It was my opinion that technically it should not affect anything but with the current direction of SEO and the potential affects of Engagement as ranking factors I thought it might be interesting to discuss.
Appreciate your comments....thanks
-
Hi Jeff
I would rather not identify the specific business.
The reason for removing the phone number is because it is a mobile number and the nature of the business means that they may get calls from other countries. This means the phone is ringing at any time of the day.
I agree it is not ideal but they do not have a landline number and a business phone cannot be manned all of the time. It is a strange set up but they are quite a small business and certainly not a typical client.
thanks for you comments
-
What business are they in that they wouldn't benefit from having a phone number? With the exception of large companies like Google and Yelp, who have to hide their phone numbers deep within their websites because of the sheer volume they get that doesn't actually help their business, I don't see why you would want to hide that. And even if you aren't a local business you can always benefit from some "local SEO" to help your presence a little bit. We even took this a step further and made our contact phone number texting compatible and it has helped a ton from a customer experience perspective.
Again, this is all dependent on the business because I know there are exceptions. But to answer your question directly, no I don't think that removing the phone number will hurt your organic results directly and I think that you can get away with not having a phone number on the site (if it makes sense for the business of course).
-
Eddie,
I believe if they are not focussing on Local SEO, there will be no effect on their rankings. Yes, I agree it's not good for the visitors if they don't find any mean of communication and this might affect them in a long run.
Umar
-
I think Remove Phone Number will not affect SEO, and if we talk about Google business page, after verified the business by Google, you can remove the phone number and address from your Google Business Page.
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
-
Seeking SEO contractor
I would like to hire an SEO contractor to assist with some technical/SEO issues on our site (Schema, etc). Can anyone make a recommendation? I am looking to work with a small company. Thank you in advance for any referrals!
On-Page Optimization | Dec 2, 2024, 6:44 AM | JulieALS1 -
Are Wildcard Subdomain Hurting my SEO?
I have some sites with a lot of categories (category, sub-category, sub-subcategory) and locations (country, state/territory, city). To avoid listing pages really deep in my hierarchy I used wildcard subdomains for the locations, but lately I have been told that might be hurting my overall SEO efforts. I have a lot of URLs like https://city-state-country.example.com on one side of the domain and example.com/category/subcategory/subsubcategory on the other. In the middle you see stuff like city-state-country.example.com/category/subcategory/subsubcategory and everything in between. Would I be better off moving the locations to the right side of the domain name? Then you might find stuff like example.com/country/state/city/category/subcategory/subsubcategory and everything in between. I think I could do the new rewrite rules fairly easily since every country slug is just two characters long.
On-Page Optimization | Jun 16, 2021, 8:26 PM | PostAlmostAnything0 -
Do Search Engines Try To Follow Phone Number Links
Any SEO thoughts on using rel="nofollow" when inserting a link to a phone number? To make a phone number click to call we use (555) 555-1234 Wondering if search engines are trying to follow that link or if this is standard and not to worry. Any thoughts on if I should add rel="nofollow" to these or does it not matter? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | May 13, 2016, 7:32 PM | Lions-Pro0 -
Address on Every page of the website for Local SEO? Good or Bad?
Is this good idea to add business address on every page of the website?, How Google see this? and This is Good or bad for ranking?
On-Page Optimization | Feb 14, 2014, 5:27 PM | Dan_Brown10 -
Best SEO Extension/Plugin for NOPCommerce Site?
Hi I am working for a client who is using NOPCommerce. It doesn't look like they have a SEO Plugin in - although you can add meta descriptions to Products - which works fine, the Product categories have SEO components too but do not seem to work and all 'other' content /CMS pages have no SEO components whatsoever. Does anyone know of a plugin which would resolve this? (PS never used NOPCommerce before!)
On-Page Optimization | Aug 13, 2014, 6:14 AM | AllieMc0 -
Do you think using accordion text can hurt SEO?
I have a lot of text for my home page. My plan is to a J Query Plugin for accordion text. Does anyone think that this can hurt SEO efforts?
On-Page Optimization | Jan 7, 2016, 8:31 AM | DTOSI1 -
SEO for spanish website
Hi, A client has given us the site http://www.comtranslations.com/Home.html for optimization. He wants to optimize only the spanish part ( the link is on the top right ). By clicking on the link Espanol, the url opened is - http://www.comtranslations.com/Principal.html. He wants seo for this website for spanish keywords. The keywords are - Traducción
On-Page Optimization | Apr 24, 2015, 4:36 AM | seoug_2005
Traductor
traducir español inglés
traducción My question is how do we go about this ? Shall we purchase a software that translates spanish to english ? Thanks0 -
German SEO
Just a quickie, Does anybody know of any strong German SEO agencies? Many Thanks Sean
On-Page Optimization | Jul 12, 2011, 5:49 PM | Yozzer0