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Phone call tracking for companies from the point of view of the SEO provider can act as a valuable tool in indicating to a business the true revenue being generated from organic search. Without call tracking, it has been (up until recently) impossible to separate the revenue generated from a customer’s offline call that was initially researched online, from a customer’s call made from other offlline advertising. Call tracking deals with this problem in one simple way.

Some call tracking software can dynamically alter the telephone number displayed in an organic search listing into a unique number, and connect a customer through the call tracking system to the company sales team in a manner totally unobtrusive to either party. The call tracking software records the call, which is identifiable by its unique number as a call made from contact with an organic search. This is to distinguish the call from a call made from a PPC ad, an e-mail, etc.. The data from the call can then be integrated with systems such as Google Analytics to obtain and supply further data indicating where a campaign can be improved and made more efficient. This data has hitherto been a medium impossible to integrate into interpretable data in this field, whereas with call tracking, a great deal of information can be obtained and used to further the SEO for a business’ website.

Research (ComScore) shows that 63% of customers visiting a website purchasing an item related to a specific keyword are made offline, and so the gap in knowledge of this type of customer’s purchase and contact with the company is closed with the advent of call tracking. This service therefore provides a very competitive edge to the profile of any SEO, and though the technology is relatively new, companies will surely be increasingly more confident in using call tracking to identify the efficiency of other areas of their marketing strategy such as print advertising, e-mails etc., whose numbers can be further integrated. This is certainly the case for PPC Avertisers, as a recent article (fathomseo.com) has shown. There is increasing pressure for SEOs to account for the ROI achieved by their work, and call tracking provides conclusive evidence of the success of any SEOs work to improve a company’s sale.

What is a great indicator for the business itself of growth is at the same time turned into an indicator of the value of SEO work on organic searches, as with call tracking the process of providing evidence of calls originating from organic searches is straight-forward. The resultant confidence a company can have in evidence of this SEO work is conclusive, and distinguishable from other sales revenue that was formerly grouped together before call tracking. The generation of a unique telephone number is a feature offered in only a few of the more comprehensive call tracking software packages, yet as an analytical tool, it is powerful in its ability to further explore the nature of offline calls researched online, a formerly closed-off area of market research and advertising optimization. Integrated SEO call tracking looks soon to be a requirement of a company’s SEM strategy.

 

Tags: analytics, call tracking, Google Analytics, ppc, SEO - Search Engine Optimization