Client WANTS to publish multiple phone numbers with different area codes

[Tim Colling]

Hi -

I have a client who wants to list several different phone numbers for themselves, with each one labelled as "main", but with different area codes. Here in California this happens more and more, where for instance here in north San Diego County we have both a 760 and a 424 area code in an "overlay".

I could make the "extra" ones be images, but then a mobile user couldn't click on them to call the client.

Is this a situation where there is no good way to solve the problem?

Or, could I solve it somehow with some clever schema markup using the Telephone markup code?

And what about citations? Are citation sites beginning to understand the need for multiple phone numbers in situations like this?

Arrgghhh...

 

[Phil Rozek]

Hey Tim,

I haven't found there to be any issues in publishing multiple phone numbers as crawlable text (as opposed to images) on a site. I've seen it and done it and have not noticed any ill effects. (Which stands to reason: for one thing, because Google is used to encountering sites with all kinds of phone numbers.)

Of course, you'll still want to have one specific location use the same phone number across the many listings. On most of them you can specify an "alternate" phone number, as I'm sure you know. But I don't know why you'd bother. The client should realize that searchers are looking for THE best phone number to call, and don't want to have to make a decision or call multiple places.

 

[Tim Colling]

... On most of them you can specify an "alternate" phone number, as I'm sure you know. But I don't know why you'd bother. The client should realize that searchers are looking for THE best phone number to call, and don't want to have to make a decision or call multiple places.

This is a complicated, but perhaps common, situation. The client does business in virtually all of So Calif and wants calls for new service to go to one, central 800 number that we placed in their site header, and then we have local office pages for their five offices and on each of those office pages we have placed these "local" phone numbers, in some cases with just local one number and area code, and in other cases with more than one local number and area code.

In a case like this, will it make any SEO or indexing difference if we use schema markup to associate these local numbers with their respective office locations?

 

[Phil Rozek]

In a case like this, will it make any SEO or indexing difference if we use schema markup to associate these local numbers with their respective office locations?

I don't think so, but maybe others have noticed that it makes a difference.

My SOP is just to make sure that the phone number specific to a given office/location is somewhere on that landing page (even if there are other phone numbers floating around on the page).