Best Practices: Different Phone Numbers on the Same Website

[Kingalan1]

Since 2006 www.nyc-officespace-leader.com has promoted my commercial real estate brokerage business. I have been the sole broker listed on the site. As a result, the same phone number has appeared consistently throughout the site.

Now I will be adding a colleague to the site (in addition to me) and I am struggling with how to best display my colleague's phone number. The 2nd broker will be adding property listings and blog posts. It was agreed that  my phone number would be replaced by my colleagues phone number on his listings and blog posts. Pages that existed before would remain with my phone number. The idea being that leads generated by the 2nd broker's new content get directed to him rather than me.

My concern is that having a new phone number listed will introduce an inconsistent phone number and harm our local SEO. I have read that it is absolutely critical that NAP (name, address, phone number) must be 100% consistent otherwise it can cause harm search engine ranking.

What are best practices for displaying different phone numbers for different personnel on the same website without harming local SEO efforts? This situation is certainly common, so I would think there must be some work arounds. I have seen "Contact" icons that when clicked show phone numbers. Is there any standard solution for this issue that keeps NAP data consistent?

Also, what if we keep the same number in the header but use different numbers in other locations? Is the header a location where we should be extra careful to display the same phone number?

Thanks, 
Alan Rosinsky
Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc.

An example of inconsistent listing pages are:

-http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/386-w-38th-street-office-lease-2370sf
(Broker "#2)

-http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/329-545-eighth-ave-office-lease-525sf
(myself)

An example of inconsistent blog pages are:

-http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/blog/the-tech-explosion-impact-on-chelsea-2
(Broker "#2)

-http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/blog/office-space-build-out-cost
(myself)

[Kingalan1]

Does anyone want to venture an opinion on this? I would think this is a potentially common issue.

Thanks,

Alan

[Kingalan1]

Basically the question is what are best practices for multiple business phone numbers on a website. How should they be added without having a detrimental effect on local SEO?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Alan!

My apologies for the delay in responding here - just getting back into the swing of things after the holidays

Okay - good news: what you have is a multi-practitioner practice, like most real estate firms would be. Typically, the structure of this would be:

1. You have a main number for the firm that connects to your customer support/front desk. You use this number on your website header, footer and pages like Contact Us. You use this phone number on your Google My Business listing for the firm and all other citations you build for the firm. You link from these citations to the homepage of the website.

2. You have a unique, high quality landing page for each of the practitioners in the firm (one for you, one for your new partner). You each list a unique phone number on your designated landing page. You build a unique set of local business listings/citations for each partner using their own phone number. You be SURE you are filling out the business title field on these citations appropriately. In other words, your citations for yourself are just Alan Rosinsky, and not Alan Rosinsky: Metro Manhattan Office Space. Similarly, your partner is just E_lliot Forest_ on his citations. You do not include the name of the company in the business title field of the practitioner citations. You link from the practitioner citations to each partner's designated landing page on the website.

3. You can have a Staff or About Us page on the site that lists all partners and their phone numbers, topped by the main contact information for the office.

4. As for the pages of property listings, themselves, I would simply put Phone Alan Rosinsky: (XXX) XXX-XXXX or Phone Elliot Forest: (XXX) XXX-XXXX on them and would not be concerned that an agent's detail would get mixed up with the main details for the practice, provided you have taken all necessary steps described above to clearly delineate each partner from one another and from the practice. This is a very common business model that should not lead to NAP inconsistency if managed properly.

5. You go into this with eyes open about Possum. Google's new filter for listings that share a physical location and share categories will likely lead to variables in which of your 3 listings (the practice and the 2 partners) show up at a given time for local searches. Your business model would be one with which a Local SEO might experiment to see if choosing a different Google category for each of the 3 entities could positively impact visibility, despite Possum. It has been some time since I've worked with a real estate agency, so I'm not sure what's available in terms of category experimentation opportunities, but I'd look into it in creating the Google My Business listings for the 3 entities.

Hope this covers the waterfront. Please, let em know if you have any further questions about this!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Alan!

Did my answer help you at all? Just want to be sure you've been helped.

[Kingalan1]

Excellent response!!! I apologize for the delayed response as I am travelling in Europe at the moment.

If I understand correctly, there are 3 entities, the business plus the 2 partners. When you refer to "unique set of local business listings/citations for each partner" what are you referring to? I understand that the business wold have a Google+, GoogleMyBusiness, GoogleMaps listing, however are you suggesting that the partners have listings for themselves that link back to the site, and if so where should these listings be?

Thanks,  Alan

[MiriamEllis]

Happy Travels, Alan!

Google permits the development of what are called 'multi-practitioner listings'. In other words, a real estate firm with 2 partners is eligible for 3 listings (one of the business and one for each of the practitioners). My advice:

1. If you go with this approach, you would also build out a set of citations for each practitioner as well as those you build for the business. By citations, I mean other listings on platforms beyond Google My Business (Facebook, Yelp, Superpages, Localeze, Infogroup, etc.). You would typically link the business' listings to the homepage, and the practitioners' citations to their respective landing pages on the website, though you'd only want to do the latter once you have built an extremely good landing page for each of the two partners. Finally, wherever possible, choose different GMB categories for the two practitioners to try to skirt around Possum as best you can, so that your practitioners can avoid the heaviest effects of that filter.

2. Alternatively, you can decide not to build multi-practitioner listings and can simply build out the GMB listing for the brand and skip building citations for the partners. This is simpler, does not get tangled up in Possum (unless there are other real estate firms in your building). If you go this way, I would still recommend building content on the website representing the two partners, for the sake of users.

Does this make this a bit clearer?