{"id":142307,"date":"2020-11-03T15:21:03","date_gmt":"2020-11-03T15:21:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.searchenginewatch.com\/?p=142307"},"modified":"2020-11-04T09:07:26","modified_gmt":"2020-11-04T09:07:26","slug":"does-changing-your-business-phone-number-affect-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2020\/11\/03\/does-changing-your-business-phone-number-affect-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"Does changing your business phone number affect SEO?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"well\">\n<h3>30-second summary:<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Although a business phone number isn\u2019t as tough on your SEO as a complete rebrand, changing it can have an impact on your SEO.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Preserving NAP consistency should be your primary goal when changing your phone number.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Your marketing strategy can help make the transition easier for your customers, too, as you can notify them of the change ahead of time. <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The key goal in addition to retaining your ranking should be to not lose the trust of your customers by changing your information \u2013 hence the need to approach the process carefully.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Much like all other aspects of digital marketing and brand positioning, SEO is a constantly changing game. With so many moving pieces and evolving trends, it\u2019s no wonder that brands aren\u2019t quite certain which decisions will <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2020\/08\/24\/three-seo-mistakes-that-can-impact-your-search-rankings\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">negatively impact their SEO<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and which ones are safe enough to make.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One day, it seems that one kind of behavior is perfectly fine, while the next Google will penalize it because they\u2019ve implemented algorithm changes. Add customer expectations into the mix, and it gets even more difficult to figure out just what\u2019s worth the effort, and what should be left alone.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When it comes to your business details, including your name, address, and phone number (neatly packed into the notion of NAP information), change can be good. After all, entire companies have successfully rebranded without a hitch. However, changing a single piece of information such as your phone number can change the entire customer journey if not done right.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here, we\u2019ll tackle a few essential steps in the process to keep in mind, so that your phone number shift doesn\u2019t impact your ranking or your brand perception negatively.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>NAP it in the bud<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/neilpatel.com\/blog\/how-to-attract-more-local-customers-a-complete-guide-to-local-seo\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Local search<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is a vital component of your overall SEO strategy, all the more so when you\u2019re running a strictly local business with a physical presence, such as a pastry shop, a car repair facility, or a beauty salon. Your foot traffic heavily depends on your customers\u2019 ability to find correct information online when they search for your services.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If they stumble upon an outdated number, they\u2019ll call the next business in their search results with solid reviews and forget that you exist. Simply put, consistency matters. Google doesn\u2019t want to disappoint its users, so it penalizes businesses with inconsistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) information across the internet. As soon as your directories, your website and other online listings don\u2019t show your actual phone number, your ranking will suffer.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The remedy is fairly simple. If you have decided to change your phone number or your entire communications system, for that matter, you should take the time to revise all your local business listings and directories where your company pops up.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/moz.com\/blog\/find-nap-variations-before-building-local-citations-whiteboard-friday\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">NAP consistency is a vital ranking factor<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that can either plummet your business in the eyes of search engines, or it can help you reach those topmost desirable spots in the SERPs. So, while changing your business phone number might not be a cause for worry on its own, how you distribute it will greatly matter in local rankings.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Take care of your call tracking<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some businesses steer clear of call tracking simply because they aren\u2019t sure how to go about it, afraid to damage their SEO in the process. Even more importantly with regards to call tracking, every business needs to adhere to those key legal requirements, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/gdpr.eu\/compliance\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">such as the EU\u2019s GDPR<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, or General Data Protection Regulation, to make sure their customers\u2019 sensitive information is safe. But when the time comes to move from outdated landlines and change your numbers or merge them, you can also reap the benefits of this potentially SEO-beneficial process.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Wanting to unify and improve their communication 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 call tracking, smarter customer support, and better customer engagement, all of which can support your SEO efforts in the long run. As you <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nextiva.com\/blog\/what-is-voip.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">learn about VoIP<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and its many applications, you\u2019ll be able to make the most of your phone-based interactions with your customers to serve your brand reputation, but also your ranking.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In addition to having more business phone numbers at your disposal if you need them, you should know that VoIP platforms come with other useful features such as call analytics, recording, emailing, and texting. Collecting all of that data and implementing SEO-safe call tracking with the help of Dynamic Number Insertion both work in favor of your SEO.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Building and preserving customer trust<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When done right, changing your business phone number can be a seamless process that doesn\u2019t do any damage to your ranking. However, it\u2019s important to remember the reason for the ranking in the first place: search engines want to give users the best, most trustworthy results first and above all other available options online. In doing so, they reward businesses that accurately portray themselves online, and contact information is a vital component of that representation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The basic premise goes as follows: if a customer 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 above yours, with accurate and verified contact details available. In a sense, it\u2019s customer trust that drives search engine ranking.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Research has confirmed this, as <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2018\/04\/30\/consumers-lose-trust-in-businesses-with-inaccurate-nap\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">80% of surveyed respondents in BrightLocal research<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> have stated that they would lose trust in a business with incorrect and inconsistent contact details. If you\u2019ve decided to change your phone number, making sure it\u2019s consistently represented across all of your digital outlets is the key piece of your SEO puzzle: to preserve customer trust and thus to preserve your ranking.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Notifying the customer in time<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thankfully, you can make sure that your customers have the correct information in a few simple ways. If you\u2019ve taken care of all of your business directory listings, your social media pages, messaging app presence, and your website, you can use your marketing strategy to get the word out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Your subscribers and return customers will want to know that your business has changed a vital piece of information. Just like you don\u2019t want them to spend an hour going to an old address of your caf\u00e9 only to discover a weird-looking shop for plumbing supplies, you want to have your new number added to their contacts list.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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 announcement on your website, too, especially if you gain plenty of call traffic from all of these outlets.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Changing a business phone number can be a simple process in itself, but its impact on your business will not be unless you prepare properly. Taking care of all the business registers where your company is listed paired with implementing search engine-approved tracking tactics as well as customer engagement will be more than enough to help you through the process.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>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 <a href=\"https:\/\/bizzmarkblog.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bizzmark blog<\/a> and a guest lecturer at Melbourne University. You can find Emma on <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/EmmaRWorden\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@EmmaRWorden<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How you handle the process of changing your business phone number can impact your SEO, but also customer trust and their perception of your brand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1092,"featured_media":142308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,5],"tags":[14595,27700,274,37,123,27982,4292,22,32,1119,10542],"content_type":[],"class_list":["post-142307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-seo","tag-address","tag-call-tracking","tag-gdpr","tag-google","tag-google-my-business","tag-nap-name","tag-phone-number","tag-seo","tag-serps","tag-strategy","tag-voice-over-ip-voip"],"acf":{"tad_independentcommercial":false,"tad_content_format":false},"post_info":{"name":"idris.nagri@blenheimchalcot.com idris.nagri@blenheimchalcot.com","title":"","thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Does-changing-your-business-phone-number-affect-SEO.png","category":"Local","timeago":"5y"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1092"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142307"},{"taxonomy":"content_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content_type?post=142307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}