There has been a great deal of debate recently about the positives and negatives of call tracking. At Ruler Analytics, we frequently get asked whether or not call tracking can be harmful to an SEO campaign, as there have been many articles decrying the whole notion of call tracking and claiming it can have a negative effect on your marketing efforts.

We at Ruler Analytics would like to set the record straight; but first let us explain what call tracking actually is.

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<h4>What is Call Tracking?</h4>
If you don't already know what Call tracking is, it's a method the marketing industry has developed to solve the problem of where your telephone leads actually come from.

Our call tracking software in particular uses Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI) to assign a unique phone number to each visitor, area or campaign, such as a PPC or SEO campaign, allowing you to trace the source from which every visitor clicked through to your website, and which keywords were used in organic searches.

Call tracking is typically used to measure the impact of PPC, SEO and retargeting campaigns, and is a vital tool for doing so, as without it, it’s impossible to prove the efficacy of your campaigns as you cannot provide proof that they were the sources of your telephone conversions.

It is also highly useful for marketing agencies, as it allows them to demonstrate to clients that they are achieving their targets

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<h4>How Can Call Tracking Be Negative For SEO?</h4>
As you know, SEO is all about getting your Google ranking as high as possible. One of the factors you have to take into account in order to achieve this is NAP.

NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone number, and must be taken into account by anyone running an SEO campaign. Google use these to validate that your business is legitimate, by checking that they are the same throughout all online directories.

If different phone numbers appear in different places, search engine algorithms can become confused, and will rank you lower, which is likely to harm your SEO campaign.

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<h4>Will Call Tracking Harm Your SEO Campaign?</h4>
If call tracking is not used correctly, it can potentially damage your SEO efforts.

Call tracking numbers should never be used in online directory listings, as a poor ranking will not only harm your SEO campaign but can also be harmful to the rest of your marketing efforts across the board.

However, as long as your call tracking system puts all the necessary precautions in place to ensure that the call tracking numbers you are using are not visible to search engines, and only the actual phone number of your business is listed, call tracking will have no negative impact on your SEO campaigns or the rest of your marketing.

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<h4>How to use Call Tracking Correctly</h4>
Using call tacking correctly basically all comes back to the Dynamic Number Insertion technology.

DNI works by using a Java Script code which displays a call tracking number to the caller, but ensures that the default phone number for your business is hard coded into your website, so it won’t change as far as the search engines’ bots are concerned.

This means that your Google ranking will not be affected, nor will your SEO campaign. By using this technology, you are still able to take advantage of call tracking to determine the exact sources of your telephone leads.

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<h4>Conclusion</h4>
Ruler Analytics’ call tracking technology uses DNI, so the main phone number of your business is what is visible to the search engines, but a unique number will be generated for every individual user who clicks through to your website from an advertisement or organic search.

This enables you to determine exactly which campaign led each visitor to your website, providing you with the vital information you need to calculate the ROI of each campaign. It can also tell you which geographical areas your callers are coming from.

In the case of visitors who have found your site through organic searches, it shows you which keywords they have used in their search, so you can see exactly what the visitors to your site are searching for. This has huge benefits when it comes to informing your future marketing efforts.

Ruler Analytics are currently offering a demo which is accompanied by a FREE 30-day trial, so you can experience the benefits of Ruler Analytics for yourself.

To book your demo, <a href="https://www.ruleranalytics.com/book-a-demo/">click here</a>, and for further news and information, please don’t forget to follow Ruler Analytics on <a href="http://www.ruleranalytics.com/twitter">Twitter</a>, <a href="http://www.facebook.com/ruleranalytics">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/ruler-analytics">LinkedIn</a>.
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