Phone Number Top of Site = Bad for SEO?

[onlinesource]

I notice a lot of sites making contacting their customer support department via phone a bit of a process.

1. You either have to click on a separate link to the support page which isn't too bad or:
2. You have to hunt through a web of FAQs and click several links in order to access their phone number.

Other sites, just have the top phone number in the header, clearly marked and easy to read. So, why do one over the other, is one best and does one have SEO benefits?

I ask because I hear so much about how time on page, bounce rate, are all important. So if people hunt for a number, doesn't that increase time on a site, on average because it requires more pages, more clicks, more time? Compared to somebody who sees a site, writes down the number and exists the site quickly.

Right now I have our support number clearly visible in the header as "CALL US NOW XXX-XXXX" and see some sites that do this (like me) and some sites that hide it? I've also seen sites where there is a link that says CALL US and it creates a popup with the number but the number is not displayed directly on the header?

Is there something to all of this?

[martinibuster]

I ask because I hear so much about how time on page, bounce rate, are all important.

Time on page and bounce rate are not important for ranking.

Your example is one of the many situations why such an algorithm would be full of noise. Indeed, this noise was studied many years ago and is recognized and understood.

Good luck,

Roger Montti

[onlinesource]

thank you

[Essex_boy]

Time on page and bounce rate are not important for ranking. - Thats for Adwords, then its a problem if its less than 70%, bounce rate that is.

I have found that with a phone number at the top of the page people do call it and ask questions, increases conversion as well.

[toidi]

The sites that hide their contact number are doing so to try to avoid talking to customers. This is a good indicator as to whether i want to do business with a site.

[topr8]

we have the telephone number clearly in the header.
around 10% of sales by volume are over the phone.
i've no idea why a legit (retail) business would bury it anywhere.

we also display the shipping cost right there in the header too
personally i think transparancy attracts customers, it's not an SEO issue it's a selling product issue.

[piatkow]

On my site contact details are one a separate page linked from the home page. No SEO reason, as a magazine we just have different contacts for readers, advertisers and distributors. What does suprise me is the number of sites for business such as hotels and music venues that require the visitor to dig through a couple of pages to find out the location.