Does a phone number in the title tag hurt your rankings in SERP?

[Ideas-Money-Art]

Hi Mozzers,

One of my client is a carpet cleaner and I was wondering if adding a phone number into the title tags would hurt our rankings .

I am asking because the client has mentioned it and that we do have some space to add a phone number into the tag.

Thanks

[Horizon]

Hi,

I don't think it will hurt per se, but I would like to know why they would want to do that?

The title tag is quite important real estate, so I would be inclined to use the 10 or so characters more effectively. Also, if people see their telephone in SERPs, that's a click your client isn't going to get through to their website.

Matt

[TLM]

I am going to have to disagree, sort of, with Horizon on the usefulness of the number within the title tag -with some reservations of course:

If the client is a local service business (I am only assuming it is based on the description of the client as a 'carpet cleaner') then I can see some usefulness to filling the space you haven't already used with a phone number. I see what Horizon is saying about using that valuable real estate to help draw visitors into the site, but at the same time I would assume that a converting lead is most important to the client so I am inclined to say that your best option is to test them both.

I know, sort of a lackluster answer.

The only reason I am not fully supporting the answer supplied by Horizon (it is a good answer regardless) is that I am not positive about how someone searching for a service, like the one supplied by your client, would like to come across and contact a vendor. Traditionally it was the phone book, word of mouth and hoping for a good result, but with all the local business sites populating the web now, I find myself taking the quality of the site as an indication of the quality of the business. However, if I was needing a carpet cleaned in a hurry I might be inclined to call the number listed in the SERPs if the rest of the blurb made it clear that they were in my area and did, in fact, clean carpets.

If it was up to me I would make a note of how the site is currently performing in terms of bringing in organic traffic/converting leads, and then I would test the other two options over a period of time. When benchmarking the current performance I would establish a set of key performance metrics to track throughout (the most important being how many converting leads are generated). Maybe test with the phone number and then test with some additional information and no number. I would wait, and use the data available to me, to find a historically stable period of time in which the testing can be as controlled as possible. Remember: if you are testing the phone number at the end you should be sure that the rest of the title supplies enough information for the potential customer to feel comfortable contacting your client.

So after all of that typing I am still where I started:

Is it better to have a small sell line or a phone number?

Is supplying a number in the SERPs when the competition does not a good way to gain a little bit of ground over them?

Are those ten or so characters enough to include anything substantial besides the phone number?

Is the possible decrease in organic traffic worth the possible increase in the 'oh my god, the cat just knocked over an entire bottle of wine and the inlaws are visiting this weekend!' busniess that may or may not be created by offering a phone number in the SERPs?

Is the rest of the title descriptive enough to convince someone searching for your clients service is what they need and that they should skip clicking through to the site in favor of calling the number?

I would be interested in reading what some of the other users have to say. I am sure there are differing opinions and a few hundred minds are better than one.

[Ideas-Money-Art]

Thank you for your thorough answer tyler!

I think that both of you have good points. On one hand Matt thinks that a phone number might sacrifice the opportunity of having a secondary keyword or a better description of the business. On the other hand Tyler thinks that adding a pn to the title might decrease traffic but generates more leads meaning a potential increase in sales which is exactly what a business wants.

But do you guys think that a phone number in a title tag won't hurt the SERP's ranking? assuming you add a phone number in all the main service pages and a different phone number for each of the 40+ microsites?

thanks

[TLM]

I think it would depend on how well the site(s) is ranking already. If it is ranking well and you are only filling in the extra characters (that is how I am reading it), then I can't see it hurting the sites SERP rankings.

However, if you are removing terms from the title to add the number, then I think you may see a dip in the results.

My bottom line: It seems to me that you are simply adding the number and not replacing anything with it. If that is the case, I really can't see it hurting the results. You shouldn't act on your clients site with just my opinion though; hopefully some others will populate this thread with some additional insight.

[Ideas-Money-Art]

Thanks for sharing your opinions and thoughts Tyler

Appreciated

[MiriamEllis]

Great discussion here, guys!

Just thought I'd pop in to add my 2 cents.

Having a phone number in the title tag will not 'hurt' the business in any way, and is a not uncommon practice in Local SEO. The only possible negative to doing this would be that you would have less characters to devote to words as they are being devoted to the digits of the phone number. So, that's about the only downside of doing this. Just remember, the client should be putting a unique title tag on every page, so some of his pages might have a phone number in the title tag, but don't use it on every page. Be creative, varied and informative in each tag and you should not expect any negative outcomes.