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PPC & Different Website Phone #'s

by Western Grizzlin'
20 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I'm doing PPC for a local business and I'm trying to figure out how the best way to track it is.

The call to action is to call them. So I need a different phone number to show for visitors who come from PPC ads.

Has anyone solved this problem? Is there a wordpress plugin to address this?
#phone #ppc #website
  • Profile picture of the author FrankBowman
    I think Google also give you trackable #s in Adwords, I know they do for GoogleTV.........
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  • Profile picture of the author Western Grizzlin'
    I have to clarify: I have no problem getting a phone number, but how do change the phone number on my website based on what link the visitor came from? (So I can be sure PPC visitors have a different phone number)
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  • Profile picture of the author tryinhere
    ? are you talking about in your campaign settings / ad extensions / phone number or a phone number in the text ad it self ? if in the text ad you will need to manually edit it there, if the first option just sect your campaign settings to edit under ad extensions ?

    if different it may be a google business listing that may need changing ?
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    • Profile picture of the author dynamicic
      Sounds like you want either Dynamic Number Insertion provided by a company or you could create a php script that does that I believe. I am not a programmer but I think those are the only two solutions.
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      • Profile picture of the author Western Grizzlin'
        Originally Posted by dynamicic View Post

        Sounds like you want either Dynamic Number Insertion provided by a company or you could create a php script that does that I believe. I am not a programmer but I think those are the only two solutions.
        This is right. I am hoping to find an easier solution, though. Maybe a wordpress plugin?
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    • Profile picture of the author Western Grizzlin'
      Originally Posted by tryinhere View Post

      ? are you talking about in your campaign settings / ad extensions / phone number or a phone number in the text ad it self ? if in the text ad you will need to manually edit it there, if the first option just sect your campaign settings to edit under ad extensions ?

      if different it may be a google business listing that may need changing ?
      I'm talking about my on my actual website. I guess more generally what I'm looking for is a way to change the phone number that appears on the website based on what link someone came to my site through.

      I'm imagining creating a URL similar to the way Google URL builder does.

      So for PPC I could create a certain link and if someone comes to my site via that link, then they are shown a certain phone number...

      I've never done PPC for a company that is looking to drive calls before. I've only worked with online actions. So this is a new field for me. Someone must have sorted this out already, I've just gotta find the solution.
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  • Profile picture of the author crudenbay
    Originally Posted by Western Grizzlin' View Post

    I'm doing PPC for a local business and I'm trying to figure out how the best way to track it is.

    The call to action is to call them. So I need a different phone number to show for visitors who come from PPC ads.

    Has anyone solved this problem? Is there a wordpress plugin to address this?
    Two options I can think of:

    1. Simple approach is to create a separate landing page for your PPC and put a unique number on that page. You will know the call came from PPC but not the KW that caused the call. Since it's local, chances are that that won't matter too much.

    2. As one other person mentioned there are dynamic phone number insertion tools...take a look at these guys for instance...Pricing & Sign-Up | Ifbyphone

    Cheers,
    Frank
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  • Profile picture of the author Western Grizzlin'
    Here's a good article about how to use a script for dynamic keyword insertion.

    I guess now I'm trying to figure out if there is a wordpress plugin that will do this.
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    • Profile picture of the author Western Grizzlin'
      Thinking about this more last night, I realized it's even more complicated than I'd been thinking.

      To truly track your local business PPC campaigns, you need to be able to

      1. Display a particular phone number when a particular URL sends a visitor to your site
      2. Display that phone number on all pages of your site, not just the landing page
      3. Display that same phone number even after a prospect has closed their browser and come back to your site days or weeks later (this means cookies, I think)
      This is starting to sound complex. Maybe there's an existing solution out there?
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  • Profile picture of the author Lucid
    You're over-thinking this. It's actually very simple.

    First, you need to have simple code on your page that simply reads a parameter that is passed from Adwords. If this parameter is set to a certain value, you display one phone number. If not, or it doesn't exist, you display another number. I'm no PHP programmer but this should be a very simple one-line code. If this was Visual Basic or similar code, it would look something like:

    IF phone_parameter = "Adwords"
    print "123-456-7890"
    ELSE
    print "123-456-1234"
    ENDIF

    Then, all you have to do is pass that parameter from Adwords. Again, simple. In the destination URL, simply add:

    ?phone_parameter=Adwords

    so the full destination URL would be something like:

    http://www.mywebsite.com/landing-pag...ameter=Adwords
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    • Profile picture of the author Western Grizzlin'
      Originally Posted by Lucid View Post

      You're over-thinking this. It's actually very simple.

      First, you need to have simple code on your page that simply reads a parameter that is passed from Adwords. If this parameter is set to a certain value, you display one phone number. If not, or it doesn't exist, you display another number. I'm no PHP programmer but this should be a very simple one-line code. If this was Visual Basic or similar code, it would look something like:

      IF phone_parameter = "Adwords"
      print "123-456-7890"
      ELSE
      print "123-456-1234"
      ENDIF

      Then, all you have to do is pass that parameter from Adwords. Again, simple. In the destination URL, simply add:

      ?phone_parameter=Adwords

      so the full destination URL would be something like:

      www.mywebsite.com/landing-page.html?phone_parameter=Adwords
      I see what you're saying. But there's at least one problem with that, and maybe two.

      First, return visitors are not show the special phone number. Sales from return calls may not be insignificant either. In my national campaigns, I have seen as high as 40% of sales coming on a return visit rather than initial.

      Second, I'm not sure if your method would continue to show the special phone number as a visitor navigates around the site. I suppose you could just continue passing the parameter around the site.

      I'm not a coder either, but I could see something like this working:

      1. At time of adwords click, put specific cookie on visitor's computer based on parameters of the url they came from.
      2. When loading a page, check for cookie and display whatever phone number cookie tells you to. If there is no cookie, display default.
      Maybe I'll take a stab at writing it. Probably would take way longer than I think it would.

      I'm also still holding out for an existing solution. It's gotta be out there!
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  • Profile picture of the author Lucid
    With a cookie, you solve the problem of returning visitors. It also solves the problem of always showing the same number throughout the site.
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    • Profile picture of the author andrewHB
      Originally Posted by Lucid View Post

      With a cookie, you solve the problem of returning visitors. It also solves the problem of always showing the same number throughout the site.
      That is the easiest way. With two or more phone numbers there is no perfect way. Changing the HTML and all the other information is just tough.

      Between cookies and two websites that will be the best way. Trust me. I have 5 adwords campaigns that are all redirected to different landing pages or websites.
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      Andrew Lambert
      Habitat Agency

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      • Profile picture of the author Western Grizzlin'
        Do either of you PPC guys know of any existing solutions or wordpress plugins or am I on my own to write something?
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        • Profile picture of the author PeteSmith
          Originally Posted by Western Grizzlin' View Post

          Do either of you PPC guys know of any existing solutions or wordpress plugins or am I on my own to write something?
          I've had exactly the same thoughts as you recently. I'd love to be able to do some part time consulting for businesses using my adwrods knowledge. It seems most people don't even know what adwords is, so the fact that you know how to run it is kind of a skill in a way. You could earn say 10% of any business you drive to the company.

          I had the same concerns about phone numbers though. The parameter idea could work but that would rely on some code changes and the site owner allowing you to do that.

          I think if I was going to offer my adword services, I would consider building a new landing page for the client and then drive my traffic there.
          I guess the site doesn't HAVE to be identicle to the main site (you may even be able to build a better page).

          The only problem now, is how will you know when someone has called your number? It would rely on the owner being honest?
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          • Profile picture of the author BlazenWeb
            Yes there aren't many quality solutions out there because surprisingly it's a relatively young tracking technology, even though it's crucial to track call sources to determine ROI.

            In the past on a specific website I employed very basic call tracking which has told me that the majority of all leads were coming via website telephone calls, as opposed to contact forms, and yet many firms will disregard calls when looking at goal conversions in their analytics package.

            One of the first call tracking solutions in the US was from Mongoose Metrics and a bit later from the UK came Fresh Egg Call Tracking. They are well worth a look and provide solutions which could be just what you're looking for.

            I have seriously looked at these in the past, my main reservations were firstly the price is quite high when dealing with small businesses, and secondly there are issues when trying to rank for Google local search because you might present telephone numbers that do not match your company listings on web directories. You can check searchengineland.com for an article on this.

            Hope that helps you to move on a bit!

            (NB I would post some links but my post count isn't high enough!)
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            • Profile picture of the author Western Grizzlin'
              Originally Posted by BlazenWeb View Post

              I have seriously looked at these in the past, my main reservations were firstly the price is quite high when dealing with small businesses, and secondly there are issues when trying to rank for Google local search because you might present telephone numbers that do not match your company listings on web directories. You can check searchengineland.com for an article on this.
              Great post. I've had exactly the same reservations about sacrificing Google Places for better tracking.

              Do you have any idea how important using the same phone number is for the Google Places algorithm? This is an interesting article, but they don't seem to address the issue of different phone numbers.

              Also, would you mind emailing me the searchengineland.com article at nickhbiz@yahoo.com?
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              • Profile picture of the author BlazenWeb
                Hi Nick, here are some articles you'll find interesting:

                There's a good one from about a year ago about call tracking
                searchengineland.com/5-ways-to-track-phone-calls-generated-from-ppc-clicks-22510

                There's also an article about being wary of using a different number in a directory to measure calls coming from that directory. That goes into what we were talking about a bit more.
                searchengineland.com/be-wary-of-call-tracking-numbers-in-local-search-26895

                I just found a recent article by Eric Enge, which funnily enough makes the exact same comment as I made about some websites getting more conversions via phone calls than contact forms
                searchenginewatch.com/3640789

                There aren't many articles around that talk about how this affects Local Search. The underlying aim seems to be to only use one version of your business phone number on other websites. And on your website only change numbers if the number that Googlebot (and other search bots) see is your main default number (i.e. the number that appears on all other websites).

                Most of the solutions mentioned use Javascript to change the phone number on your website depending on where the visitor came from. This code has to be put throughout your website wherever a phone number appears.

                The only issue I see is would Google have a problem if it's fed a different phone number compared to everyone else. Google is now able to read more and more javascript, maybe Google could work out what's going on.......but we know Google doesn't like being shown different content to everyone else. Maybe a question for Matt Cutts....
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                • Profile picture of the author Western Grizzlin'
                  Great articles. It's surprising how little attention this issue gets. I guess that just means more opportunity for those of us who figure out workable solutions.

                  I can't see a problem with using a different phone number for PPC. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Google crawls pages via PPC links; at least not search PPC.

                  I guess it's just a programming problem at this point.
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                  • Profile picture of the author BlazenWeb
                    Yes, if your PPC landing pages are not linked to from the rest of your website (which would be unlikely) then there shouldn't be indexed by Google, although Googlebot can find these pages using various means, so you should use <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, FOLLOW"> on these pages.

                    These landing pages could still get links from other websites so using meta follow (rather than meta nofollow) could help pass the link juice on to other pages on your website.

                    The next question is if you are linking to other pages located in the main part of your website from your landing page, then phone number issues will come into it, because the user could potentially call you from any page on your website. Obviously this depends on how you craft your landing pages.
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