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.
Using same business number on different websites
-
Hello,
I have number of websites in different locations with different business name and address with verified listings. However, I am thinking to use the same phone number on all the websites as it is difficult for me to keep track of all the numbers.
So, is it okay to use the same phone number on different websites with different business name and address?
Waiting for your thoughts.
Brian
-
If the call is ringing 10-12 times before the call forwarding provider connects with your phone, I would drop that provider. A good company will have a seamless transition so no one would ever know the difference when they call you. Who are you currently running tracking numbers through? Sounds like either you've set up too many redirects in the call system or the provider has some serious support issues.
-
Hi Brian,
As others in the community have rightly indicated, sharing a phone number across multiple websites is definitely a no-no. It may help to think of it this way. You have a Google My Business listing for your company, HappyTrees.com, and it points to your website. Google's bots travel from your GMB data to your website to cross-check for accuracy. They find your name, address and phone number on the website page your GMB listing points to and say, "A-okay, this checks out."
Then they crawl further and they begin to encounter the phone number you've got on your GMB listing and HappyTrees.com on BigTrees.com, TallTrees.com and GreenTrees.com. The bot stops and says, "Wait a minute, I thought this phone number belonged to Happy Trees. What's up with this? Hmm ... my data isn't trustworthy about this business. Likely, this shouldn't be ranking as well as this competitor here who clearly has this very consistent NAP."
Maybe a somewhat cartoon-ish explanation, but I find it can be helpful to visualize how Google may react to decisions you are making in your online marketing. One of your best bets for achieving high rankings is to have utterly consistent NAP across the ecosystem, and so, the following things can dilute this:
-
Any mismatches in name, address, phone, website anywhere on the web
-
Taking a multi-site approach instead of a single site approach
-
Duplicating your content across multi sites
-
Sharing details or interlinking between multi sites
-
The use of call tracking numbers in any local search campaign except in a very few instances which are described very well in these 2 posts:
http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/11/25/guide-to-using-call-tracking-for-local-search/
http://localu.org/blog/truth-about-seo-call-tracking/
Any mistakes in these areas have been described as severely damaging to a business' ability to rank well for its desired terms, so a thorough study of the history of each of these types of issues would be your best bet for protecting your company against unwanted outcomes.
Hope this helps, and glad you've asked!
-
-
Hello All,
Thanks for replying.
I am already using a tracking number but the problem is if you call the business on our tracking number, it rings over 10-12 times before it’s picked up. This results in a large number of callers not leaving a message or just hanging up.
About how to answer, the nature of business is independent of where the call came from. The only thing matters is the call but as I said I am using tracking number and I cannot replace that service provider.
Further, as per the responses, I think it would be bad to put the same number. Is there any other solution?
Thanks in advance!
-
Under no circumstances if you want to rank for local results should you use the same telephone number for multiple locations or different companies that will destroy your ranking as you will compete against yourself and confuse Google. There are many excellent methods of getting additional phone numbers that are legitimate
do not mess with your NAP
Name
Address
Phone number
Level 3, jive communications, grasshopper, trilo, 8x8, Vonage, & Ringcentral are just a few that come to mind.
I believe you can save money on grasshopper in Moz.com/perks I can personally vouch for jive, grasshopper, trilo & 8x8 for inexpensive phone numbers trilo is tough to beat but may not be the exactly what you're looking for. I encourage you to look at all the phone systems I can tell you I think
http://grasshopper.com/blog/should-you-have-a-local-number-for-business/
http://grasshopper.com/blog/local-numbers-have-benefits-too-ya-know/
-
I assume that doesn't matter, otherwise the question asked wouldn't make sense.
But good point! I'd like to know the answer as well
-
SEO aside ... how would you know how to answer the phone?
-
Hi there.
It surely would look strange and maybe even suspicious in eyes of google. What about simple call forwarding? Just forward all calls from all of those numbers to your main one. Win-win situation.
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
-
What do I need to do for SEO when moving a business out of state?
Hello! So I have a business that I run out of a single location for the last 3 years. I am unfortunately having to move here in the next few weeks My question is what do I need to do in order to have the best chance at SEO for the new location? When should I make the changes? Does it take a long time for me to stop showing up in the previous location? and is there something I need to do to remove those? Also, is there an app or a website where I can find and update all listings at once or at least a bulk of them? I know that there are some weird sites that have my business info in them that I did not put there. Obviously these would have the wrong address. Some do not have a contact info or a way for me to log into them. What would I do with these sites? Thank you!
Local Listings | | Rmarkjr810 -
Adding Schema to multi-location Wordpress Website using Schema Pro
All, we're building a new version of our existing website using Wordpress and have both Yoast SEO Premium and Schema Pro installed. Our site has 70, a medical practice, has 70 different locations. Each one of our locations has a page tile like the following: "Los Angeles | ABC Dental". The first part of the site title is the town we're located in followed by our site name. Using Schema Pro, we're not sure about what to place into the "Name" field. You can see the direction from Schema Pro for local businesses here, https://wpschema.com/docs/add-schema-markup-for-a-local-business-page/ By default Schema Pro has the name field set to Site Title. However, using this on all 70 or our landing pages wouldn't provide the local aspect we want. It would just say ABC Dental. We changed this to use a new custom field where we could enter a more descriptive name. Using our page title example of "Los Angeles | ABC Dental", would we simply enter this into the name field of Schema Pro? If not, would we format this another way such as "ABC Dental Los Angeles" We could use some help in a strategy for Schema markup for multi-location businesses, in particular, the name field. All other information such as address, phone number, etc seems rather straight forward. Thank you for the assistance
Local Listings | | morciuoli0 -
Google My Business -Choosing Multiple Categories
Hi friends, I'm trying to work out what would the practice be for a business who is operating in different categories in terms of displaying those categories in Google My Business account. We have a client who is supplying both catering and cleaning products (both categories are core). In this case, listing those two categories in GMB would be alright or should I expect a negative impact on results related to both categories as we have chosen multiple categories? Any advice would be appreciated greatly!
Local Listings | | bbop331 -
Google My Business for Municipalities?
I'm working with the City of Lakewood, WA, on an image campaign that overlaps a bit with some SEO goals. If you Google "Lakewood, WA", in the knowledge panel to the right of the search results is an image of building on fire. I'm not sure where this image comes from or why it has been selected as the image to represent the City of Lakewood but its been there for a while. If this was a small business, I would simply claim their Google My Business page and feed some good images into it. Problem solved. But Google doesn't offer an option to "Claim this City". LOL. Can you create a GMB page for a municipality? Does anyone know the right thing to do here to make this picture go away and give the city more control over its own image?
Local Listings | | TheKatzMeow2 -
Why is the incorrect city name being appended to search results when that search is done from a completely different city? Screenshot Included
Hi Guys, This is weird. When searching "generator rentals" from within Vancouver/Lower Mainland and on a mobile device, our organic listing is ranked #1. That is the good news. The bad news is that for some reason the title returend is: Generator Rentals & Temporary Power Distribution - Edmonton". The "-Edmonton" is dynamically added, but I have no idea why. Edmonton is in a completely different province than Vancouver... over 720 miles apart. The only thing I can think of is that there is some sort conflict with our Google places account. You see, we do have an Edmonton branch. I have setup two branches... one for the Coquitlam/Vancouver branch and one for the Edmonton. And as far as I can tell, both are setup correctly. A screenshot from my iPhone has been linked (http://imgur.com/9YvyLDB). Any ideas would be appreciated. Thank you, Jarrett 9YvyLDB
Local Listings | | TrinityPower0 -
What To Do With Two Business Having The Same Name?
Hi friends, We have a client who is in a peculiar predicament... essentially his business and his biggest competitor share the same name. Officially on their business licenses they are differentiated by the year they were each established, but in all their marketing, on their website, and in the community they are both known by the exact same name. When the company name is searched for, the competitor shows up #1 organically with the map pin as well as in the knowledge graph, and our site shows up number 2 without any any map pin or Google+ page site link or anything. We thought we could differentiate ourselves by changing his Google+ page name to his official business name (with the date) and building a bunch of really good citations with that official business name, but we still haven't made a dent for his branded keyword, and our Google+ page site links aren't even showing up. Has anyone run into a situation like this and any suggestions?
Local Listings | | localtrifecta_im0 -
2 businesses same phone number
I was wondering how I should approach a scenario where I am optimizing two different companies websites that have the same phone number but different addresses. This sounds like a weird scenario, however it is out of my control. Is treating them as two separate companies fine, or do I have to take special precautions when submitting business directories and what not? Thanks for everyone's help! As a side note, is their a way to use Moz Local with both companies, right now it is getting confused as to what business belongs to what listing.
Local Listings | | brfieger0 -
2 phone numbers in our SERP snippet are incorrect. How do I fix it?
At the special rich snippet at the top of the SERP, we have 5 phone numbers, but 2 of them are for something specific and need to be removed. Do you know how to do this? I've looked up the 2 phone numbers and they appear to only be on PDF documents. Any ideas?
Local Listings | | FOTF_DigitalMarketing0