Before yesterday I had never heard of the Minnesota Search Engine Marketing Association. Today I respect them a great deal.
Why?
Because they wrote a very fair and accurate article about call tracking. There haven’t been many of those lately. Most articles about call tracking are either written by a few local marketing firms that don’t understand modern call tracking technology and therefore oppose it, or they’re written by call tracking providers like us.
These articles, as you can probably imagine, can be slightly slanted.
That’s where the Minnesota Search Engine Marketing Association entered the picture. They wrote a great article about call tracking.
The article was authored by Minnesota Search Engine Marketing Association Member James Svoboda. He’s the CEO of SEO and SEM firm WebRanking. I’d actually heard of WebRanking before. I’ve heard nothing but good things about their work.
In this blog we’ll discuss a few statements from the article and make a couple of comments of our own.
The Call Tracking Article
“There is still a lot of mystery and confusion surrounding tracking telephone calls.”
Indeed there is. Very few people truly understand how call tracking works. And it seems like some people don’t want to understand how call tracking works. They’re content to reinforce their current beliefs about call tracking.
“It’s best to only use call tracking on your, or client’s, website. Never for a directory, citation or yellow page listing…”
We agree. Call tracking can be used on a website without any SEO problems at all. Unfortunately, when some people write about call tracking they discuss the negative problems associated with using call tracking on directories and fail to differentiate this from correct call tracking uses.
They throw the call tracking baby out with the bathwater.
That’s why we like this article. It answers a nuanced question in a nuanced way. Other articles we’ve read about call tracking are either by vitriolic opponents of call tracking and they don’t point out the positive uses of the tool, OR, they’re by call tracking providers that, admittedly, have a slightly slanted view of their technology.
In truth, call tracking can be used to gather VERY valuable online data.
The article continues with some very technical advice about how to ensure NAP and then concludes with this statement:
“Call tracking can be done safely. Now that you understand how you can use it in a NAP friendly manner there should be little reason not to use it for your websites. It will provide you a clearer picture of the leads and sales that you are generating from your online marketing.”
Ultimately, millions of businesses use call tracking because it gathers ROI data for them. Call tracking is indispensible for these businesses.
