We often talk about titles here, maybe too often. CTA, USP, and Keywords are the mantra we repeat, all within less than 512 pixels. Perhaps you should stuff the phone number in there too?
Last week, I spoke with an industry colleague in Brazil who runs one of the larger SEO departments at a company specializing in TV, internet, and mobile subscriptions. We had a rather lengthy discussion about their titles, not because I got involved, but because they asked for a second opinion. You see, they have their phone number in all of their titles, and it produces some interesting effects.
An update: This is what it looks like today, where we are testing in the search results for SEO. We changed the title when the post was written.
It could be national differences
Brazil is far from as developed as the online market in Sweden. For a long time, people were hesitant about online payments, and computer penetration isn’t the same. Still, I find the data somewhat interesting, and we’ll probably run a test on this site (on selected pages).
My objection was that they had phone numbers in every title on several of their websites. This could reduce CTR (click-through rate), which in some search results might actually be a negative factor. We can’t confirm this for sure, but we have seen tendencies. My industry colleague was very aware of this, but since so many people chose to call directly from the search result, and their incoming leads increased by over 20% when they added the phone numbers, they decided to keep them there.
If having a phone number in the title can lead to 20% more leads, that’s definitely something worth testing. Do you think we’ll see the same in Sweden?
Update: We changed our minds
Sometimes you get answers quickly. We quickly lost several positions, and the snippet also appeared. The site has been planted in first place for quite a few months, so I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this is happening right now. With a bit of luck, we might regain the first position with the change.
One potential error factor is that, in such a short time, changes can swing “the wrong way” before eventually correcting themselves.
Magnus Bråth
Consultant & Adviser
Magnus is one of the world's most prominent search marketing specialists and primarily works with management and strategy at his agency Brath AB.