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
-
I have lots of articles on my website. Should I add myself as the Author Rank for seo purposes
Hi All, We have lots of articles on our news page of our website. Should we add one of us as the author to gain Author Rank points so to speak ?.. Have not done anything previously with this but just wondered if we were missing a trick here thanks Pete
On-Page Optimization | | PeteC120 -
Do parameters in a URL make a difference from an SEO point of view
We us a number of different parameters in a number of our URLs to track how the user has navigated to the page. So for example we will have a page www.example.com/product/?banner to show that the user has navigated to the page from the banner as opposed to www.example.com/product/?footer to show that the user has navigated to the page from the footer. Do search engines treat these pages as the same page or different pages? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | cbarron0 -
Bullet points good or bad for seo?
Hi Everyone, After a body of unique content of say 50 words, will Google then penalise you for adding bullet points which will then be duplicated across all those products (say 100 products)? http://www.polesandblinds.com/acacia-teal-roller-blind/? Look forward to your comments, good or bad, Thanks Jonathan
On-Page Optimization | | JonnytheB0 -
Are pages with lots of pictures with outbound links bad for seo?
"Inspiration" blog posts are a good example. The one below has 80 pictures as part of a logo inspiration page. But each picture has an outbound url. Bad or doesn't matter? http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/80-creative-and-well-designed-logos/
On-Page Optimization | | seo_f20120 -
SEO for Image only posts
Let's say I have a post where I show 25 different wood textures. I start the post with a small paragraph and then I show several images of wood textures linked to an internal or external page. Since I don't use a text link, then I have to rely on alt tags. It would be very difficult to assign a different alt tag to so many similar images, and I guess there would be a risk of keyword stuffing (walnut wood, oak wood, etc). On the other side, if I assign the same tag to all images, then that clearly is keyword stuffing (alt=wood textures). This is just an example, but it applies to most of my posts. What do you think I should do with the alt tags? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | enriquef0 -
SEO capability on web pages v blog posts
firstly, apologies if this is a daft question, I am very new to this! We are about to launch a new website (very exciting) and our CEO is mad about incorprating a "tag cloud" because it looks good! Our web designer therefore has to convert all our web pages to "posts" in order for the tag cloud to pick up the "tagged" words associated with the specific pages (soon to be posts). Question: With regards to SEO, will the change from "web page" to "post" have any positive or negative effects? Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | Joelfarrow0 -
Numbers in URL's - Search friendly or not?
Hi Mozzers, I have a client who has just launched a new website and we are having difficulties in making the URL's search friendly. I wont get into the technical aspects, but I'll explain the potential solutions the developers have given me. current: www.site.com/en/product/browse-by-product/37/22 Where 'en' stands for the English version of the website, 37 is the product category for example 'hard drives', and 22 is the product name or example 'seagate' Option to fix; www.site.com/en/p/product/hard-drives-37/seagate-22 This optional fix reduces the word product down to p, reduces 'browse by product' to 'product' and inserts the category and product names. Note the category identifier '37' has to be included in the URL, and the product identifier '22' also has to be in the URL. Obviously this is not great, but it is required at the moment. Best case scenario would be to have the URL like this... www.site.com/en/hard-drives/seagate So my question is, how far off the best case scenario is the option to fix? Scale of 1 to 10 would be good?
On-Page Optimization | | JoeyDorrington0 -
SEO Titles and Keyword Density
Hey guys, I'm doing some on page SEO for a few clients and I've always wondered about this question. I have read tons of articles on the perfect <title>tag, but they don't often mention this.</p> <p>So my titles, like most others follow this format:</p> <p>Keyword 1 | Keyword 2 - Company</p> <p>So say for example I am trying to rank for 'life insurance' and 'life insurance quote' for 'axa sunlife'.</p> <p>It's my assumption that the title should be:</p> <p>Life Insurance Quote - Axa Sunlife</p> <p>rather than:</p> <p>Life Insurance | Life Insurance Quote - Axa Sunlife</p> <p>Am I right in thinking that putting it twice has no added value, and could in fact have an adverse effect?</p> <p>Thanks,</p> <p>Lewis.</p> <p> </p></title>
On-Page Optimization | | SEOMyGod0