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!
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
-
Adding a Directory to Website
Hiya! So we have an odd request and we wanted to see if want we want to do will add any SEO benefit. We operate a printing/design firm in Houston, Texas and have been thinking of adding a directory to our website. It would sit on our top level domain www.website.com/print-directory, it would much be a like a yelp directory listing all the print, design, and bindery shops all across the USA. We want to expand our footprint online and and to boost to our position in other cities. For example Yelp is always the top spot when you search for (CITY) + (PRINTING)/(DESIGN) the yelp directories pull up first. Now... i know why this is with their DA/UR off the charts. We have vendor that will provide all the info/data/images of all businesses in the USA something around 5K business so. The design will mesh with our current design and look seamless with the current design.The idea is that we would populate and optimize all the city pages for all those cities and provide content on each major city. So we can optimize with H tags, keywords and interlink all the other pages plus not to mention we have a great blog section and plan on interlink that throughout website. The catch would be..... is that we would put our listing first, on top of all those other local shops. Maybe we would do this for all of them but maybe a few of our target cities. We would use our addresses and nothing would be faked. URL Structure www.website.com/print-directory/austin-texas/printshops/ABCPrinter/ Questions Would this confuse Google and cause some issues with our current SERPS? We do very well in our home city and don't want to jeopardize all our hard work. Or real harm or benefit just seems to confusing people? Could we get penalized? Content would be unique (except listing information)
Local Listings | | ListrBrands0 -
Categories for Google My Business pages - do they need to match terms on website?
I have a chiropractor client with three locations. Because the Chiropractor category is very competitive, whomever originally set-up their GMB pages elected to use the category "Pain Control Clinic" for two locations, and "Medical Center" for the third location. They rank badly for these categories. Their website does not contain many signals for pain control or medical center; it is very much chiropractor focused. Is this something Google takes into consideration when deciding how to rank GMB pages?
Local Listings | | Marce5210 -
Local SEO penalty?
Hi Moz Community We are in a unique position. We just launched a new site for a client. The site was doing fine before but it wasn't very user friendly. We created a site with almost identical architecture and content as the last one, just new design and layout. Within 5 days, the site dropped off of LOCAL search almost completely, it now ranks on the 9th page in Austin Texas. (reliantplumbingdotcom). Every other location (Dallas, LA, Philadelphia, Houston) all show the site on the first page for relevant keywords (Austin Plumbers, Austin Plumber) I have no idea what to think about this and don't know if we're being penalized somehow (checked GSC and no manual penalty) I have never experienced a site being blacklisted locally but well ranked everywhere else. Thoughts?
Local Listings | | GrueBleenAgency1 -
Website with higher domain authority and good content not ranking locally?
I've got a client that has a higher domain authority than top ranking sites, is pretty well optimized from a content perspective, has good local reviews but still isn't ranking well at all... often not at all in local results. We don't show in map pack or even regular organic listings in a pretty small city. They are a local sign shop- so they make business signs/church signs etc. Have you seen anything negatively impacting local rankings that is worth digging into as possible cause? A few historical insights: They had some spammy backlinks (we think a competitor was being shady) that I've sent disavow files into Google for They had a previous SEO person create 100's of orphan pages for every possible city + offering combination you can think of- I've cleaned those up via 301 redirects Should I just keep waiting, doing content optimization or am I missing something else?
Local Listings | | karmadigital0 -
Bad Google Reviews - Should I Remove the Map From My Website?
I have a Google map on a website. Currently, there are only two 1-star reviews — which show next to the company name on the map. We added the map for local SEO reasons, but I’m thinking I should take it down because customer experience supersedes local SEO. Why boost search rankings if the content will drive people away from converting? So basically, customer experience > local SEO. Question: Do you all agree, or do any of you have any evidence that I should leave it? For example, it’s below the fold, so it isn’t the first thing they see, and we really need to boost their local SEO.
Local Listings | | BlueCorona1 -
Local Seo Service Url Best practices.
Hey Guys and Gals, What's the best format for service urls for local seo? http://www.example.com/basement-remodeling or http://www.example.com/basement-remodeling-ashburn-leesburg-sterling-va/
Local Listings | | hde0 -
Local SEO
Hi I'm interested in renting a live work loft in a location where I would like to also do business out of. And I do understand that I would list the business as a service type business. But I wanted to know if I would be doing things correctly by doing that? And yes I'm in the kind of business that can be listed as a service type business.
Local Listings | | LittleDog0 -
Javacript & Schematic Markup for Local SEO
I am trying to apply schematic markup for a client who is using javascript for their store hours and maps. Will Google be able to comprehend the data in the Javascript file if I set up a schematic property for this? I wanted to use this specific property http://schema.org/openingHours. Our client is also importing reviews from a third party source. Would it be possible to apply schematic markup to a 3rd party source? Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks!
Local Listings | | RosemaryB0