(Entry was posted by Graham Southor on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 10/24/2019).

National phone number or local phone number?

My question is: which is better for SEO purposes for a national (UK) franchise company... to have a single, national phone number (eg 0800, 0845) or only have the local phone numbers of franchisees on the website?Currently, the HQ phone number is a local (Bristol) number, beginning 0117. I promote this phone number in calls to action on the blogs I write for the website. The idea is that if customers ring HQ, someone will pass on the lead to a local will writer, who are based all over the UK. Each will writer has their own landing page, on which their own local number is published. However, the site seems to rank strongly in the Bristol area but not so well outside it - an issue for a national business that wants to attract more franchisees and customers. Is this because the local phone number is used so much on the site that Google "thinks" it`s a local company? Would, instead, a national number be better for SEO purposes? Or should no "central" phone number be used at all - should the homepage simply link through to a single "directory" page showing all the will writers? Grateful for any thoughts on this!

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YOUR ANSWERS

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

Michael Martinez: What would be the point of using a national number if local customers need to reach the franchisee? Or, vice versa, what would be the point of having local numbers on the sites if local customers can only (legally) interact with the national brand owner? Don`t think in terms of "what works best for local SEO". Think in terms of "what should we do to meet customer/public needs?"
Neil Cheesman: An 0800 number is a freephone number and is used nationally... and locally.. as it is free...
Scott Clark: In the US, local phone numbers for franchises is essential. We do not publish the HQ call center number often at all. It is shown on the website when the location lookups fail.

Bristol is ranking due to proximity and presumably domain equity, link profile and such, which are commonly stronger on a HQ vs local offices in a franchise.

Have you connected Google My Business to the individual landing page URLs for each office?

Have you invested in individual LocalBusiness schema on the landing pages?
Graham Southorn: Yes we`ve done Google MyBusiness for the local offices. But I`ve haven`t heard of LocalBusiness schema so many thanks for the suggestion. I`ll look into that.
Weldon Stanford II: Graham Southorn There is local business Schema. I am about to drive, but I post some good if later tonight.
Graham Southorn: Weldon Stanford II Thanks Weldon, much appreciated.
Tim Capper: So my question is this - if you implemented a national Freephone number.

1) Does the head office have the capacity to deal with all the calls
2) Will customer service be affected by receiving all calls at one location and then having to either forward the call onto the local number or contacting local franchise to follow up?

If you are not set up correctly to deal with this properly without affecting customer service - then stick with local numbers

FYI: Even if you did implement a single freephone then it would still be advisable to list the local number on - 1) location pages on site 2) as secondary number within GMB so as not to affect NAP
Graham Southorn: Thanks for your advice Tim. We`d definitely stick with local numbers for franchisees. I take your point about capacity and customer service. I guess I was coming from the perspective ofL would a "generic" number like 0800 or 0845 be better than all my blogs advertising the local HQ number, which might make Google favour the site in local Bristol searches but make it less visible elsewhere in the country. There`s plenty of food for thought in all the responses though - thanks very much.