Will using call tracking phone numbers in paid legal directories listing negatively affect our website?

[MiriamEllis]

Hey There!

Good question, and yes, if you use call tracking numbers improperly, it can play havoc with your NAP consistency and your lcoal rankings. I recommend you read this piece from start to finish to get a big picture sense of call tracking, including how to do it in a safe way:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/11/25/guide-to-using-call-tracking-for-local-search/

Hope this helps!

[SEO4leagalPA]

Funny thing, I read this article this spring and per it's guidance and had our main number ported to CallRail and implemented dynamic number insertion on our website to track all callers to  not only measure ROI from paid campaigns but SEO efforts as well. We are a Law firm and I didn't want confidential calls being recorded and was told by CallRail Support that once the call was transferred from the receptionists line to an attorney's line that the recording (and minutes counted) would stop.

Well they were wrong. The recording continued AND we were being billed not only by Comcast, our phone service provider but also by CallRail, so were were paying twice for phone service! We are on the phone a lot and this was not an option! Not only did the porting of the number cause our calls to our main number to disconnect for a day on the front end, when I had to port it back to Comcast, the same thing happened (both times Comcast's fault). But CallRail also had our tracking numbers forward to a support reps voicemail (who forgot to change it) instead of our ported main number. Needless to say my boss was thought I was a complete f-up. CallRail did work hard to make things right and didn't charge us minutes during the time it took to port our main phone number back to Comcast. But it was a complete fiasco. So people need to realize what they are getting into with the articles suggestion.

My boss still wants to know ROI but is really hesitant to try DNI again, thus my reason for wanting to use call tracking number for paid listings. I was hoping if paid for, then it wouldn't mess with ranking due to NAP.

[MiriamEllis]

Wow! Thank you so much for taking the time to describe your experience with CallRail. This is the first time I've heard these issues described, and can understand your wariness. Sounds like a really rough time!

[apowell]

Hey, I'm Andy, one of the co-founders of CallRail. I can understand your frustration -- we dropped the ball on this. I reviewed this situation with our support team shortly after it occurred, and we changed our process and communication so that situations like the one you experienced shouldn't happen in the future. Those changes are:

1. Our support team is required to preconfigure all numbers involved in ports, before they're submitted to the carrier. That way an unusually quick port doesn't cause a number to route to an unexpected destination.
2. Clarification to the team that both recording (which is optional) and billing apply to the entire duration of the call because the call continues to flow through CallRail, even if that call is transferred by the recipient's phone system.

Again, I'm sorry that this was not a smooth process for you. We're always working to get better.

[SEO4leagalPA]

Hi Andy;

Thank you for your response, I wanted to let you know that your support team really worked hard to help get things right and we continue to be a CallRail customer. I am using your tracking numbers for industry paid directory listings and will be using for PPC in near future as well.

And as I mentioned, it was Comcast that screwed up the porting of our main number, both to and from CallRail, causing line to go down. We never had a problem with CallRail's Dynamic Insertion Numbers on our website and I'd like to use that again at some point once I regain my boss's confidence.

I just think that the suggestion in the article of porting a businesses main number to track SEO ROI is not a financially feasible solution since all calls/minutes to that number will be billed by both CallRail and the businesses own phone service provider doubling the phone bill. I think the article should be updated to mention this point.

I still haven’t gotten a response on whether Google will view a tracking number in industry paid directory listings as inconsistent NAP and ding us. Right now I am only using one in our Lawyers.com enhanced listing because they already replaced our main number with a tracking number of their own. I may as well use my own tracking number and recording so I can track from lead to client.

Tamera

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Tamera,

If Google is finding different tracking numbers for your business on different listings, then, yes, that would be a situation of NAP inconsistency which could diminish Google's trust in your data. Hence, the suggestions of making your existing phone number a call tracking number, porting, etc.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Andy,

Thanks for popping in to let the community know what CallRail has done to improve this.

[vasolo]

Hi Tamera, I wrote the post on Mike Blumenthal's blog that Miriam posted. (I also work for CallRail, btw.)  I figured I'd weigh in here since there's some nuance to paid directory listings that I think is worth considering.

Google's use of NAPU (U is for URL) consistency as a ranking factor is for one reason and one reason only: to deliver reliable information about a business to a searcher. If Google gives out a bad phone number, bad URL, or bad address, and a searcher becomes frustrated, there's a higher likelihood of that searcher not returning for other similar queries in the future. (This is partly the reason that Yelp was able to make serious inroads in the restaurant vertical--because it had more reliable data than Google for the average restaurant.)

That being said, the reality is that what we refer to as NAP Consistency is signal-to-noise ratio. If the overwhelming signal around the web is that a business's phone number is X, then a few places/directories where Y pops up are not likely to impact ranking. Google's algorithm is aware that many directory platforms (including AdWords Express's map ads, btw) offer tracking numbers to every advertiser for the same reasons we all love call tracking numbers to begin with: call attribution.  They want you to attribute phone calls to the money you gave their platform. The algorithm has much of this baked in.

Bottom line: I don't think there is a good reason to worry too much about tracking phone numbers listed in _paid directory listings.  _As always, you should monitor to make sure bad data isn't popping up elsewhere after beginning any new campaign that involves unique phone numbers.

I recently wrote an advanced guide to call tracking numbers, local SEO, NAP consistency, and Dynamic Number Insertion that might be helpful.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Mark!

Thanks so much for taking the time to pop in an add some context to this discussion. First, I'd like to thank you for making an important distinction:

I don't think there is a good reason to worry too much about tracking phone numbers listed in paid directory listings.

It's very important for our community to notice here that Mark is referencing paid listings, not structured citations.

Also, Mark, as you've popped by, I'd like to ask if any of your sentiments or advice have changed since you wrote that post at Mike's site. It's a highly cited post. Glad you've included a link to a newer post of yours, and I'd value hearing if anything you've seen since your wrote the original guest post has changed your take on call tracking 'safety' in any way.

Again, thanks for joining this discussion. Very valuable having you here!

[SEO4leagalPA]

Mark, thanks so much for weighing in on this. The article you provided a link for above actually is the article that I read which lead me to port our main number, after which all the craziness happened. If we could've found a way to not have all minutes double billed it would have been a great solution.

In any case, my gut told that I shouldn't worry too much about a few paid listings especially since Google uses call tracking in Adwords. I just couldn't find any references to back it up except The legal directory sales guys. I just wanted some independent advice. I truly appreciate you taking the time to respond. Thank you!