Does waffly your merchantry phone number stupefy SEO?

Much like all other aspects of digital marketing and trademark positioning, SEO is a constantly waffly game. With so many moving pieces and evolving trends, it’s no wonder that brands aren’t quite unrepealable which decisions will negatively impact their SEO, and which ones are unscratched unbearable to make. 

One day, it seems that one kind of policies is perfectly fine, while the next Google will penalize it considering they’ve implemented algorithm changes. Add consumer expectations into the mix, and it gets plane increasingly difficult to icon out just what’s worth the effort, and what should be left alone. 

When it comes to your merchantry details, including your name, address, and phone number (neatly packed into the notion of NAP information), transpiration can be good. After all, unshortened companies have successfully rebranded without a hitch. However, waffly a each piece of information such as your phone number can transpiration the unshortened consumer journey if not washed-up right.

Here, we’ll tackle a few essential steps in the process to alimony in mind, so that your phone number shift doesn’t impact your ranking or your trademark perception negatively. 

NAP it in the bud

Local search is a vital component of your overall SEO strategy, all the increasingly so when you’re running a strictly local merchantry with a physical presence, such as a pastry shop, a car repair facility, or a eyeful salon. Your foot traffic heavily depends on your customers’ worthiness to find correct information online when they search for your services.

If they stumble upon an outdated number, they’ll undeniability the next merchantry in their search results with solid reviews and forget that you exist. Simply put, consistency matters. Google doesn’t want to disappoint its users, so it penalizes businesses with inconsistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) information wideness the internet. As soon as your directories, your website and other online listings don’t show your very phone number, your ranking will suffer.

The remedy is fairly simple. If you have decided to transpiration your phone number or your unshortened communications system, for that matter, you should take the time to revise all your local merchantry listings and directories where your visitor pops up. 

NAP consistency is a vital ranking factor that can either plummet your merchantry in the vision of search engines, or it can help you reach those topmost desirable spots in the SERPs. So, while waffly your merchantry phone number might not be a rationalization for worry on its own, how you distribute it will profoundly matter in local rankings. 

Take superintendency of your undeniability tracking

Some businesses steer well-spoken of undeniability tracking simply considering they aren’t sure how to go well-nigh it, wrung to forfeiture their SEO in the process. Plane increasingly importantly with regards to undeniability tracking, every merchantry needs to pinion to those key legal requirements, such as the EU’s GDPR, or General Data Protection Regulation, to make sure their customers’ sensitive information is safe. But when the time comes to move from outdated landlines and transpiration your numbers or merge them, you can moreover reap the benefits of this potentially SEO-beneficial process.

Wanting to unify and modernize their liaison systems, companies are switching to digital phone solutions such as voice over internet protocol (or VoIP for short). There are many perks of such a transition for undeniability tracking, smarter consumer support, and largest consumer engagement, all of which can support your SEO efforts in the long run. As you learn well-nigh VoIP and its many applications, you’ll be worldly-wise to make the most of your phone-based interactions with your customers to serve your trademark reputation, but moreover your ranking.

In wing to having increasingly merchantry phone numbers at your disposal if you need them, you should know that VoIP platforms come with other useful features such as undeniability analytics, recording, emailing, and texting. Collecting all of that data and implementing SEO-safe undeniability tracking with the help of Dynamic Number Insertion both work in favor of your SEO.

Building and preserving consumer trust

When washed-up right, waffly your merchantry phone number can be a seamless process that doesn’t do any forfeiture to your ranking. However, it’s important to remember the reason for the ranking in the first place: search engines want to requite users the best, most trustworthy results first and whilom all other misogynist options online. In doing so, they reward businesses that virtuously portray themselves online, and contact information is a vital component of that representation.

The vital premise goes as follows: if a consumer calls you and gets a notification that the number no longer exists, they lose trust in your brand. Google and other search engines recognize that lack of trust and thus push other businesses whilom yours, with well-judged and verified contact details available. In a sense, it’s consumer trust that drives search engine ranking. 

Research has confirmed this, as 80% of surveyed respondents in BrightLocal research have stated that they would lose trust in a merchantry with incorrect and inconsistent contact details. If you’ve decided to transpiration your phone number, making sure it’s unceasingly represented wideness all of your digital outlets is the key piece of your SEO puzzle: to preserve consumer trust and thus to preserve your ranking. 

Notifying the consumer in time

Thankfully, you can make sure that your customers have the correct information in a few simple ways. If you’ve taken superintendency of all of your merchantry directory listings, your social media pages, messaging app presence, and your website, you can use your marketing strategy to get the word out. 

Your subscribers and return customers will want to know that your merchantry has reverted a vital piece of information. Just like you don’t want them to spend an hour going to an old write of your café only to discover a weird-looking shop for plumbing supplies, you want to have your new number widow to their contacts list.

You can use your weekly/monthly newsletter to notify them of the switch, post a social media update letting customers know the new number they can reach you on, and post a little utterance on your website, too, expressly if you proceeds plenty of undeniability traffic from all of these outlets.

Changing a merchantry phone number can be a simple process in itself, but its impact on your merchantry will not be unless you prepare properly. Taking superintendency of all the merchantry registers where your visitor is listed paired with implementing search engine-approved tracking tactics as well as consumer engagement will be increasingly than unbearable to help you through the process. 

Emma Worden is a digital marketer and blogger from Sydney. Emma writes for many relevant, industry related online publications and does a job of an Executive Editor at Bizzmark blog and a guest lecturer at Melbourne University. You can find Emma on @EmmaRWorden.