The fact regarding SEO and Call Tracking

There has been a vast deal of talk about SEO and call tracking lately. Several local marketers have written articles decrying call tracking, saying that it hurts SEO. Other local marketing experts have written rebuttals, stating obviously that call tracking does not hurt SEO when it is deployed correctly.

What is Call Tracking?

Call tracking is a way for online marketers to follow which sources, campaigns, and keywords generate phone calls. Hundreds of thousands of marketer’s crossways the U.S. and Canada use call tracking to close the loop on their marketing ROI calculations. Some of the biggest companies in the world use call tracking to calculate the effectiveness of their PPC campaigns, SEO pains, and retargeting. These companies value call data significantly. They spend a lot of money on it.

Marketing agencies also use call tracking. They use it as a way to show their worth to their clients. It is particularly popular among agencies that do PPC and SEO work.

What is the fact?

Call tracking, when used properly does not hurt SEO. That’s the truth. Even most eager call tracking opponents admit that.

The correct way to use call tracking is to use call tracking DNI. This doesn’t hurt SEO. We’ll discuss more about this afterward in the article.

The problem is that the call tracking industry has usually done a very poor job of educating marketers about what correct use of call tracking actually is.

Why Do Some Say Call Tracking Hurts SEO?

Because of NAP.

Google makes it very clear that Name Address and Phone number (NAP) have to be reliable across all online directories. Having unlike phone numbers in a ton of different places confuses Google’s algorithms and will hurt your SEO. This is why a few local marketers have written articles criticizing call tracking.

They’re right about one craze. Call tracking numbers should not be used in a range of directory listings across the web. That will hurt your SEO. This is common knowledge (or should be).

However, far too often articles offensive call tracking will lump all uses of call tracking (on-site Dynamic Number Insertion, primarily) together with erroneous use of call tracking in directories.

And, admittedly, some call tracking companies have not operated with care in this area. They have located call tracking numbers all over directories without worrying about the consequences for their clients. This is bad business and bad for the industry.

Ways to properly Use Call Tracking

One of the best articles regarding how to correctly use call tracking was written recently by the Minnesota Search Association. I STRONGLY recommend that you read this article. They lay out 5 exact ways to ensure that call tracking does not harm your SEO. At the risk of being recurring, I won’t go into the details and methods they discuss. But I will mention one more method that ensures call tracking is safe, Dynamic Number Insertion.

Both sides of the debate.

The bottom line is this: local marketers and call tracking companies need to deal with this nuanced issue in a nuanced way. If a call tracking business says that call tracking numbers NEVER hurt SEO, they are wrong. If a local marketer says that call tracking numbers ALWAYS or even MOSTLY hurt SEO, they are incorrect.

Using call tracking numbers on directories is bad. Using call tracking DNI on your site is good.