New Local Tracking Number for Places vs an 800 Number.

[qlkasdjfw]

I am having a problem with local search for my business. I submitted the same NAP (Name, Address, Phone) info to Google Places as I have submitted via LocalEZE and Universal Business Listing. Here is the issue. The local number that is being used does not have any way to track calls, meaning the phone company (xo communications) does not give us the number of incoming calls. To add call tracking to the local numbers through our PBX system is very expensive, $2000 per store. Also to transfer this local number to a call tracking company (like callsource or whoiscalling) is a lot of trouble and not an option either. I need to track the call count somehow so I have two options left. 1) Get a new local number (that is also a tracking number through a phone tracking company) and then submit this to Google Places, LocalEZE and Universal Business Listing. The issue with this is that all of our citations will be re-set with a new local number, basically we'd have to do local SEO all over again. 2) Use the main 800 number in Google Places, this can be tracked. However, then our local number is on all of the NAP citations and Google Places will be the only web property with an 800 number. What are your thoughts?

[juliemarg]

You have to decide what is the value of knowing how many calls you get.  Is it worth the risk of falling out of the SERPs, starting from scratch with your SEO?  I used to work for AT&T yellow pages and customers frequently wanted tracking numbers but rarely did anything with them.

I sold yellow pages for 15 years and I can only think of one customer who used the info to increase sales or improve marketing.

Even when we implemented a reverse directory type of tracking, where the caller id info was captured, businesses never did anything with it.

[matthewbyers]

You may also consider trying to find a workaround in your PBX system. We had a similar problem and determined that the best solution was to program our phone system so that each DID rang to a separate queue. It was labor intensive and repetitive, but ultimately it gave us the ability to run reports on queue activity and reverse engineer the number of calls from the reports since each queue only had one DID pointing to it. Your system may or may not have similar functionality, but it may be worth looking into.

[Francisco_Meza]

I learned this from Avinash. Look into MoongeMetrics. It will integrate with GA and you can track your offline conversions. The phone number will change depending on where the source. For instance, if you want you 800 # to show for organic search, the PHP script will populate the 800 # only for organic search. If you want area code 123 to show for local calls, then the PHP script will show the 123 phone number to people ONLY in that city. LEARN about this because it will answer a lot of your questions. Sorry I can't go into more detail. I have to go, but spend a couple hours studying it.

http://www.google.com/analytics/apps/results?category=Phone%20Call%20Tracking

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2yndcPXUL8 (this is moongemetrics)

[MiriamEllis]

Greetings!
I wanted to provide some resources for you to review before making a decision on this. Here is an SEOmoz discussion on this same topic:

http://www.seomoz.org/q/call-tracking-and-local-seo

Here is an article from 2009 by David Mihm which continues to be pointed to in most discussions of call tracking:

http://searchengineland.com/be-wary-of-call-tracking-numbers-in-local-search-26895

Here is a detailed and excellent article from Chris Silver Smith regarding cloaking and call tracking:

http://searchengineland.com/for-local-seo-lack-of-call-tracking-solution-spawns-cloaking-70198

I believe that a read of these three resources will give you all of the information you need to make an informed choice regarding the risk/benefits of call tracking in a local campaign. Good luck!
Miriam