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Wow, I am a bit surprised about your reference to tracking numbers being a positive.  Tracking phone numbers that are not the genuine phone number to the business and used on their genuine website can mess up the client's NAP which is their very identity online.  So I guess we will have to agree to disagree on that one.

We do track our services but through other proven, white hat methods that protect our clients' online reputations now and long-term.

Finally, many of our clients are small local business with very limited advertising resources. Many do not even understand the value of having quality content on their own websites. I guess I just would just rather see them invest in content rather than duplicate links.

Actually, I am talking about clients who place ads with Yellow Pages, Dex, etc.  It seems they think that by spreading their money around they will cover all the bases when actually, I would say we are working at cross purposes with these large advertisers (since the functions are uncoordinated), duplicating efforts (if one really believes they do SEO), etc. at the very least.  So I am talking about the "big guns" with high PRs, not your typical SEO company competitor.

We have a handful of clients that we are working with who also contract with some of those "big name" advertisers for large sums of money each month. Some of these advertisers use tracking numbers and "nongenuine" websites so that can account for their performance. We belief that this is not only a waste of resources, but that that they actually harm rankings over time.  Some of the advertisers even say they are doing SEO. What are your thoughts on the wisdom of clients who spread their limited resources among a variety of advertisers, pretty much falling for sales pitches that undermine and/or duplicate our efforts.  We can get them a link without a cost to them  from these same advertisers! Finally, are you aware of any articles on this issue? Thank you.

Thanks everyone for your your thoughtful insights and confirming my initial concerns.  All the best!

Anyone else want to chime in on this?

I completely agree with you Dhirender. Again, it is not us who is doing this but one of our clients appears to have initiated this on their own Facebook page. I only have Facebook access on their account to provide links to articles and press releases we publish on their behalf. Still, I will be removing myself as an administrator and have no further activity on their FB page.

So they recently made me an administrator so I can add links to articles and other optimization information but they appear to be paying another agency to engage in like for a like campaign.  I am very uncomfortable with it. I started noticing these weird messages from other folks on FB saying things like "I liked you page now check out mine and like it back."  What are your thoughts?

I am referring to the name of the business, not the on page features.

I am wondering if commas in a company name make a difference?

We are running into more and more new clients who bought into marketing packages with call tracking and even some that created duplicate websites for these numbers.  I believe this is a bad idea for clients as it dilutes their NAP.  Are others seeing a similar trend? How do you work around this problem with and for clients?