Search engine optimization (SEO) is a popular, budget-friendly marketing technique for acquiring customers. Call tracking is another digital marketing technique and technology that empowers traffic acquisition and maximizes the return on marketing investments.
Where do call tracking and local SEO intersect, and what benefits come from their “cooperation,” particularly for digital marketers? This is what we will find out in the pages that follow.
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is a search engine optimization strategy that helps improve local rankings for geo-dependent queries where the city, region, or user’s location is specified.
On average, half of everything people search for in search engines are local queries. For example, their share is 46% of Google’s total requests.
Local SEO includes queries indicating a country or specifying a region, as well as formulations containing “near me,” “closest,” etc. When users turn to Google or Bing with this information, local companies appear in the top results.
To rank higher in local search results, local businesses can optimize their Google Business Profiles, enrich website content, or leverage a purchased backlink to strengthen their online presence.
Spoiler: tracking and analyzing local phone calls is frequently used to enhance all the above-mentioned SEO approaches.
What Is Call Tracking?
Call tracking is a technology and a popular marketing tool used to determine the advertising channel that brought a new potential client to a business through an incoming call.
The technology stipulates replacing your permanent mobile or stationary number with another “rented” number from the operator. When the client calls, the call is forwarded from the rented number to your permanent number, which is invisible to the caller.
It is important to understand that call tracking can be static or dynamic.
Static Call Tracking
It has one replacement number and is used to track individual marketing channels. Usually, these channels are outside your website: blog posts, articles, social media groups, TV commercials, outdoor banners, and SERPs (search engine results pages).
One number is linked to a separate advertising channel. As a result, you can understand how many calls there were from this channel.
The simplest version of such call tracking involves a separate office number that is not “exposed” anywhere else. However, this is impractical for analyzing the results of local SEO campaigns.
Dynamic Call Tracking
Dynamic tracking works similarly to static tracking but has several replacement numbers. The system issues the replacement number for each user’s visit to your mobile app or website.
It does not matter which advertising channel the user came from. The system itself will link the user’s session and the phone number. As a result, you will understand which advertising channel led to the call to your business.
Synergy Between SEO and Call Tracking
Modern businesses operating online are flooded with data. When everyone uses web technologies with plenty of tracking tools, the challenge is not collecting data but interpreting it effectively to drive informed marketing decisions.
By the same token, SEO can drive significant traffic and leads that are easy to track, for example, via Google Analytics.
Everything becomes a bit trickier when prospects decide to make a phone call instead of clicking on a weblink — a widespread scenario for the USA market. In the US, people prefer calling to browsing.
This is where SEO call tracking comes in.
Proper call-tracking tools let you assign dedicated phone numbers to ads, landing pages, websites, and other content. This synergy lets you track and analyze the call information, understanding which SEO keywords or pages prompt phone calls.
It’s a win-win situation for your customers, who enjoy better services, and for you, as you can maximize the return on your marketing investment (ROMI).
Setting Up Call Tracking For Local SEO: A Step-By-Step Guide
Below, we have prepared a quick step-by-step guide showing how to implement and configure call tracking to achieve maximum local SEO results.
Step 1. Choose Call Tracking Tool
Select a call tracking provider (e.g., CallTrackingMetrics, CallRail) that supports the integration with local SEO features like keyword-tracking, dynamic call tracking, and integration with Google Business Profile.
Step 2. Configure Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI)
DNI is based on a dynamic call tracking feature, which is the ideal type of call tracking for local SEO purposes. It assigns and displays different numbers to users based on their location or source, e.g., partner’s website, local search campaign, social media pages, etc.
Step 3. Integrate with Analytics and Google Business Profile
Configure your call tracking with Google Analytics and Google Business Profile to enable informed decision-making. This will allow you to attribute specific dynamic phone numbers to local links and reviews, and SEO campaigns.
Step 4. Launch and Monitor Your Data
Start tracking and analyzing local calls, paying attention to:
- Which campaigns, landing pages, and keywords generate the most phone calls;
- Which geographic areas are yielding the highest traffic
- Which user demographics bring higher conversions
Analyze the obtained data and turn it into information and insights to improve the performance of your local SEO campaigns.
Who Needs Call Tracking and Local SEO The Most?
Local SEO through call tracking is primarily necessary for small businesses and organizations operating in a specific geographic area and having a physical address. For them, it is often complemented by working with published mentions to amplify such organizations’ reach and reputation.
Typically, these are businesses in such niches as:
- Cafés, restaurants;
- Entertainment venues, cinemas;
- Medical/cosmetology clinics;
- Beauty salons;
- Brick and mortar stores/groceries.
It is not difficult to take the top positions in local searches since low-frequency queries and weak competition prevail here. At the same time, the positions in local search results are extremely unstable. It is as easy to fly out of the top as to get into it.
This is precisely where call tracking and local SEO integration shines. It enables an ongoing flow of insights into the performance of your SEO. And when you know what works and what doesn’t, optimizing your efforts and driving more high-value traffic while saving money is easy.
The Bigger Picture
Call tracking holds the key to enhancing the performance of one’s local SEO campaigns. It enables informed decision-making, especially for areas and locations where people prefer using their phones to browsing.
Besides providing apparent benefits, such as insights into the performance of local SEO campaigns to improve local rankings, it also offers other marketing perks. For example, you can use the conversion metric from mobile calls to understand how well your website or app performs for mobile users.
Additionally, you can identify content gaps by recording and analyzing what the callers say and share to understand their pain points and needs.
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