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What do you do if you get a call from an area code you don’t know?
You can just ignore it, but a lot of the time, people look it up. When they make that search, they often land on a page from Dialpad.
That’s because Dialpad has engineered their website to capture searches for area codes. This doesn’t just help searchers find basic information about a phone number — it also targets sales and customer support professionals trying to buy phone numbers with a specific area code.
This is a simple, intuitive strategy for bringing in traffic — so simple that plenty of other sites are trying the same thing but not seeing the same success. The real secret here is how Dialpad executes it with excellence.
Let’s dive into how Dialpad is bringing in half a million visitors a month, targeting their core audience, and driving revenue directly from these pages.
The Value of Area Codes
When considering the value for Dialpad of area-code-related keywords, there are two questions worth answering: why are these terms relevant to Dialpad, and who’s searching for them?
Let’s unpack both of those questions to see the real value in ranking for area code keywords.
Supporting a Key Revenue Driver
Dialpad is a cloud-based communications platform. They help companies power customer communications in three main ways:
- Phone calls
- Video calls
- Contact centers
These products brought Dialpad $200 million in annual recurring revenue in 2023. One of their main revenue drivers is the voice call platform, where Dialpad sells the ability to make unlimited voice calls from a specific local, international, or toll-free number, as well as add additional numbers for a small fee.
That makes targeting area codes a natural fit for Dialpad. If people are searching for phone numbers in specific area codes, being the top-ranking result should give them an advantage in targeting their ideal customers.
But not everyone who makes those searches fits their ideal customer profile. That prompts the next questions: Who is searching for these numbers, and what’s their value to Dialpad?
Driving 500,000 Monthly Organic Visitors
The numbers couldn’t be more clear. Ranking at the top of the SERPs for a large number of area code searches brings Dialpad hundreds of thousands of visitors every month.
19 of Dialpad’s 20 highest-traffic pages are in their local phone numbers folder, which has averaged over 500,000 visits a month in 2024. Just look at how that compares to the traffic the Dialpad’s homepage brings in:
But raw traffic numbers aren’t always what matters. Instead, let’s look at what that traffic is worth.
There are two main search intents behind people looking up area codes. The first and likely more common one is people wondering where someone else is calling from. The second is Dialpad’s ideal customer profile (ICP): sales and customer support professionals looking up area codes they may want to buy phone numbers to call from.
That ICP knows that people, including their potential customers and clients, are more likely to answer calls from local area codes. That’s one of the reasons that they search for area codes: to see which dialing platform sells them.
It’s tough to tell how many of the searchers fall into this category or how many of them actually make a purchase. However, we can estimate the value of Dialpad’s strategy for targeting them by working backward from cost-per-click (CPC) numbers.
Every keyword has an approximate CPC if you want to buy a Google Ad to rank at the top. If you look at the actual traffic to a site from each keyword and multiply it by the CPC, you have the amount that Google would charge a company for paid ads directing the same traffic to their sites.
If Google is pricing that CPC accurately to its value, we can use it to calculate the value of the traffic Dialpad is getting from their local phone numbers folder — more than $3 million a year.
To get more insights on this strategy, I talked to Debbie Chew, Dialpad’s Head of Global SEO.
She told me that monthly search volume (MSV) and keyword difficulty (KD) actually aren’t the most important factors impacting which topics she picks to focus on.
“We didn’t only look at your “typical” metrics of MSV and KD,” Chew said. “We also worked with our data team to understand which area codes are the most popular amongst our customers.”
Of course, plenty of people who aren’t in the ICP are searching for these area codes. But general awareness-building is plenty valuable too. That’s why companies like Dialpad buy Super Bowl commercials that come with a $7 million price tag. Clearly, the benefits of improving name recognition, trust, and brand equity are worth the cost.
Bringing in 500,000 visitors every month is a great way to build more awareness of Dialpad’s brand. It also helps build topical authority — Google’s way of sorting which sites have expertise on specific subject matter.
This strategy has been so successful that one of Dialpad’s biggest competitors, RingCentral, has started trying to copy it, though they have yet to reach the level of traffic volume that Dialpad is seeing.
Breaking Down Dialpad’s Area Code Pages
Dialpad’s area code pages are a great example of targeted, efficient SEO and web design, crafted to both draw in traffic and directly convert that interest into leads and sales. Here’s a closer look at the key elements that make these pages so effective.
How They Rank
Dialpad’s 646 area code page is a prime example of the strategy they’re utilizing with this content type. This page, like many others in their local phone numbers directory, is structured to provide essential information right at the top. Visitors immediately learn the most important information about the 646 area code: It’s based in Manhattan.
Chew told me that Dialpad is “genuinely trying to create helpful area code pages, and I think that’s part of why they rank well.”
The trick is how they build that helpful content into highly effective sales copy.
Notice in the image below how the information about this specific area code is immediately couched in a call-to-action (CTA), giving an immediate opportunity for a sales conversion.
Other practical details, such as geographic coverage and overlap with other area codes, come a little later, after the key information. This approach ensures that the content is directly relevant to the user’s query, with a focus on delivering value without any filler.
After the page’s introduction, we get a highly snippet-able section with more details about the area code, meaning it’s easy for search engines to pull direct answers from the content for featured snippets.
This section focuses on delivering concise, accurate information beneath an H2 that features a secondary keyword (area code 646) nested within a relevant question (where is area code 646?). All of that is clearly set up to appear as a featured snippet in Google.
This strategic content structuring plays a pivotal role in how these pages rank so effectively despite not necessarily having a significant word count, the highest domain rating, or the most backlinks.
Can you guess what the top of the SERP for “646 area code” looks like?
That’s right, it’s a direct quote from the previous screenshot. Dialpad has identified that the key to SEO success here is answering the search query as directly and concisely as possible, before getting into more details. It’s all killer, no filler.
This page has a lower word count, a lower domain rating, and fewer backlinks than its competitors. But being highly relevant, concise, and including well-constructed content like this still allows it to top the SERPS.
How They Drive Revenue
These area code pages make up a finely tuned machine to maximize conversions from searches.
The mechanism behind this conversion process is sophisticated yet straightforward, focusing on engaging readers immediately, strategically placing CTAs, and leveraging the psychology of user intent.
Let’s take a closer look.
Multiple unambiguous CTAs: Dialpad employs a multi-pronged approach to their CTAs, offering five opportunities to sign up for a free trial or schedule a demo on each area code page. There’s no mistaking it — this is designed to bring in sales.
Targeted content for a defined audience: The content on these pages goes beyond mere informational value about area codes. Dialpad intentionally designs them to speak to sales and customer service professionals, not someone idly wondering where a call came in from.
This focus on their target audience makes sure that their marketing efforts are directed where they matter most: at an audience with a commercial search intent.
Optimization through A/B testing: One of the keys to Dialpad’s success with these pages is their potential for continuous improvement through A/B testing. There are 70 of these pages, so they can test different layouts, CTA placements, and messaging simultaneously.
That way, Dialpad can iteratively refine each page and improve its effectiveness. This relentless optimization could help them keep improving their conversion rates over time.
Customization for high-value targets: For area codes with significant commercial appeal, such as Manhattan’s 646, Dialpad offers customized content that underscores the unique benefits of securing a number in such areas.
Copy like the text in the screenshot below might take time to put together, but it adds even more value to the page.
This not only increases the page’s appeal to businesses looking to establish a prestigious local presence but also signals to search engines the page’s unique value, potentially boosting its SEO performance.
According to Debbie Chew, they take this level of customization seriously across all 70 area code pages. “Although the page layouts are the same, we want to make sure each page we manually create is genuinely helpful,” Chew said. “As a result, there is less similarity across pages.”
By melding strategic design, precise content targeting, and continuous optimization, Dialpad’s area code pages exemplify how to transform specific, high-intent web traffic into a substantial revenue stream.
This approach not only underscores the importance of aligning web content with business objectives but also highlights the potential of niche SEO strategies in driving significant business outcomes.
More SEO Breakdowns
Dialpad’s area code pages demonstrate the clear value of finding your niche and creating easy-to-build, high-quality, and informative articles speaking directly to that niche. The result is traffic worth millions. But you might be wondering, “What is the equivalent of area codes in my industry?”
Dialpad isn’t the only company that consistently ranks high by using short, focused articles with the same structure. This same method has worked for companies like BambooHR, Grammarly, and DataBricks. Oftentimes, this approach takes place in a glossary or learning center.
Feel free to check out any of those breakdowns for more ways you can apply this method yourself.
