The importance of NAP Consistency for local SEO
Let`s first start with what NAP stands for. This stands for name, address, phone number, and NAP consistency is one of the important factors of local SEO.
However, many businesses overlook the importance of having consistent NAP information, assuming that search engines and customers are smart enough to discover the correct NAP data among various names, changing addresses, and incorrect phone numbers. The fact is that maintaining your NAP profile accurate and up-to-date on your website and other platforms is critical for positioning well in local search results.
Due to Google’s top ranking factors influencing local search, having a consistent NAP plays an important part in Google’s Local Pack results and building citations to your Google My Business listing. Google looks at these citations to make sure you have a legitimate business to build trust among your potential customers.
The more listings you have with the same information, the more trustworthy you appear to Google. When people perform a geographical search on Google, your data will be used to show them the most relevant, local results. An incorrect NAP, on the other hand, may frustrate customers and possibly result in lost revenue.
Know you know exactly what NAP is, and why it is important for your local business, let`s dive into doing an NAP Audit to prevent inconsistent NAP information.
Conduct a quality NAP audit
If your business is very new, it will be easy to keep your NAP information consistent. All you have to do is make sure wherever you enter your NAP information, that you use the correct information and exactly the same as on your GMB Listing.
If your local business is already up and running for years, it is essential to find out where all your NAP information is listed online. You can do this for free within Google by searching searching your company name + address. And you can also test by googling your phone number, or just the address.
Once you’ve discovered these citations and listings, make a note of them on your Audit Spreadsheet so you can figure out which ones need to be updated.
By filling up the correct data of your NAP Audit in our GMB audit template, you can ensure that your company’s customer experience starts on the right foot. By being visible and relevant during their first searches of the site or app, customers will have no problem finding what they need because there are plenty more opportunities at every turn!
Instead of doing it manually, you can also use one of the following paid tools to speed things up!
Website NAP for single and multiple locations
Your website is the face of your business, and it aids both search engines and customers in determining your information correctly. All of your data should line up with your website to ensure that the NAP on your website is accurate and consistent with good spelling and formatting.
The greatest strategy for small companies is to make your NAP data readily available in specific spots, such as the header and footer, to make it simple for clients and search engines to find. Including this information in the header or footer guarantees that your NAP data appears on every page of your website. If you have multiple locations, make sure you use the NAP information of your headquarters in the footer or header.
It’s also important not to forget to place your NAP info on your contact page. You can add it to your code, especially if you are using WordPress or a similar platform. If you have a single location business you can add the same NAP information that you put in the footer.
However, if you own multiple locations, make sure that you have a separate location page for each location that you own. And put the NAP information of that specific location on the page.
Make sure you always put the information in form of text, as the search engines can`t crawl the text inside images!
Add local Schema markup to your website
As you know, Google strives to give the most relevant results for each search. The easiest approach to accomplish this is to add a Schema local business markup to your website that allows search engines to better understand your NAP data. As a result, you may receive a more user-friendly display in local search listings, referred to as rich snippets.
You can use the Google Structured Data Markup Helper to create your schema markup for local business.
After you have created the structured data markup, you can generate the code and add it to your <head> section in the html code.
To see whether you correctly installed the code snippet, you may use Google’s Structured Data Testing tool. If you make a mistake while filling in some tags, Google will offer you recommendations or additional alerts.
Update your NAP
Update your Google My Business profile
Update your business directories and websites
Google My Business is an important aspect of any SEO campaign. The easiest approach to persuade search engines that your NAP information is genuine is to contribute valuable and consistent content to Google – your Google My Business profile.
Next go through our free GMB Audit Template with all the different websites where your NAP information is registered, and update the data on the websites where your NAP information is not consistent with your website and Google my business profile.
If you don`t have any login to a website where you are listed, you can contact the website owner to update your listing.
Ensure NAP consistency for multiple locations
If you operate several locations, ensuring consistent location signals throughout the company may be difficult. If your company has multiple sites, you can include all of your NAPs on each page. Many organizations neglect to provide business information, and it results in missed sales opportunities.
To make your life easier, we recommend to use paid tools to keep track of the NAP information for all different locations. This minimizes the chance of human errors and overall speeds up the whole process.
Avoid the following NAP mistakes to improve consistency across locations for multi-location firms:
- Use multiple phone numbers for a single company location. You must have a local and regular phone number for each unique place on your Google My Business website, local directories, and location site page.
- Forget to update your NAP info for closed or moved locations.
- Duplicate local listings that result from company acquisitions and name changes.
- Audit for spam listings and get rid of the ones that don’t belong. If you want to speed up the process of getting rid of those pesky spam listings on Google, just contact them with a CID number for each listing.
When you’ve cleaned all of these errors up and maintained correct NAP information, your company’s local results will be much more visible and have a beneficial influence on the whole organization.
Tips for Good NAP Consistency
You have seen the importance of NAP and want to improve on your consistency, but how?
Here are some tips for good listing information.
Avoid Abbreviations
Don’t use an abbreviation in your business name or location and make sure it is consistent with what you are providing when someone searches for information about the company. For example, if I am looking up a plumbing contractor then I want to find their official website so that all of my options match up appropriately without any confusion on which site has more accurate listings available (e.g., Tubman Plumbing & HVAC). The best way would be using full words rather than just throwing together short phrases at random; everything needs its due diligence!
Avoid using common abbreviations for your company’s name. Search engines won’t know the official spelling of NAP, so it is best to keep things uniform across different platforms like social media sites and local listings.
Call Tracking NAP Tips
Here are our top 3 recommendations for using call tracking in local SEO while maintaining NAP consistency:
1) Dynamic Numbers
Use Dynamic Number Insertion to track all visitors on your website and get the most detailed information about what’s making phone ring. DNI delivers an unbelievable amount of insightful data, is remarkable safe for name/address or PNO accuracy (Proprietary Numbers), and will give you a competitive edge over other businesses!
2) First-Time Callers
One of the most important metrics to measure is first-time callers. Focus on generating new customers by focusing your local SEO campaign efforts and eliminate counting existing ones in order for a more accurate representation of performance!
3) The Indexing Dilemma
This quote from Nyagoslav Zhekov of Whitespark puts it in perspective:
“Search Engines manage their own databases, however, they utilize the information provided to them through the above-mentioned sources (the four Primary Data Aggregators, and Other Key Sites). If the business data on any of these primary sources is incorrect it can override the information that is already available in the Search Engine’s database, this can lead to either new listings being created or changing existing listing data.”
If Google has bad information that is already in their index, then it’s possible they are using this for Local Search. Newer more accurate data might not be overriding the old inaccurate citations because they haven’t crawled and/or indexed listings from primary sources. This could affect rankings if those updated info aren’t being used by google themselves; So as you can see its very important for all of us to make sure our content gets included with fresh updates each month so we don’t fall behind on what’s current or relevant!
For more details read the “The Expert Guide To Getting Local SEO Citations Indexed By Google Fast“!
Conclusion
If you want to get your company’s local results more visible and have a beneficial influence on the whole organization, it is important that you keep NAP information consistent. The easiest way to do this is by using paid tools or third-party service providers who can help with the process of tracking all different locations. This can help you save a lot of time and manual work.
Happy Crush!
SEO Lover, my motto is Action Over Words.
