As competition is increasing for the top organic rankings and the cost of PPC is rising, organizations and agencies are looking for ways to stand out from the crowd in a cost effective manner.
One simple way is to use a telephone number in your meta description and PPC ads. Doing so allows you to stand out in a number of ways. The first way is that if a searcher is using an iPhone or other smartphone, your telephone number is hyperlinked and the searcher can dial it by clicking on it right in the browser. Secondly, if a searcher has Skype installed with phone number highlighting turned on, your organic ranking or PPC ad will stand out and they’ll also be able to dial from Skype.
The screenshot below shows how a telephone number in the organic meta data can make your ad stand out from the rest of the listings in Bing using Skype.
There are currently over 100 million Skype users and tens of millions of iPhone or smartphone owners. Those two figures combined mean that there are a large number of web searchers who would be affected by this simple technique.
What do you think? Do you own a smartphone? Do you pay more attention to the ads with telephone numbers?
What about Skype users with the call highlighting turned on? Do you pay more attention to listings with a highlighted phone number? I know I do.
This article is from Andrew Freeman
Andrew is Sitewire's resident Englishman, having immigrated to the US in April 08. He holds the record for fastest transition from intern to employee at under 3 weeks. He's known for his knack at negotiating media buys and his eye for ROI.
Andrew has written 17 posts.
