Why NAP Consistency Is Essential for Local SEO
6 Minute Read
Are you keeping your NAP data consistent across online directories and other platforms? Without NAP consistency, your local search engine optimization is asleep at the wheel—and your rankings are about to crash, if they haven’t already.
What Does NAP Stand For in SEO?
NAP stands for:
- Name
- Address
- Phone number
It refers to the three foundational elements of online business data. They tell users and customers (and the search engines) Who You Are, Where to Find You, and How to Reach You.
Missing or inaccurate information for any one of these components will make it hard for your business to stand out in local search, as well as open the door for competitors with better optimization to outrank you.
Google and other search engines look at consistent NAP data as a major trust signal. Reliable and verifiable business information supports higher ranking in local search. If you’re not showing up in the Local Pack and other local SERPs, taking steps to improve business NAP could be the solution.
What Is Consistent NAP?
NAP information is consistent if the name, address, and phone number are written the same way each and every time. Consistency should be apparent across:
- Google Business Profile listings
- Optimize every field you can on GBP—primary and secondary categories, high-quality images, review management, business hours, etc.
- Other online business listings (Bing Places for Business, Yelp, industry-specific platforms, etc.)
- Local directories
- Review aggregators
- Social media profiles and handles
- News releases, guest articles, local media coverage, etc.
- Event listings
- Awards and honors from local and industry organizations
Your Name, Address, and Phone number should also appear in the footer of your website. This is NAP data you can easily manage. NAP can be further solidified on your website using LocalBusiness schema. This structured data helps search engines better understand your NAP info.
Search engines will compare what’s on your site with information elsewhere to determine the accuracy of your NAP—and, in turn, the credibility of your business.
What Are Local Citations?
Any online mention of your business NAP is a local citation. Local citations get you noticed and help build legitimacy in the eyes of search engines, improving your ability to rank in the local community. Mentions are meaningless, however, if you don’t have NAP consistency.
Our NAP best practices for consistent local citations and improving local SEO:
- Land on a business name and stick with it.
- Write your business name exactly the same way every time—capitalization, punctuation, spaces, everything.
- Ex: Don’t write “MyCompany, Inc.” on one site and “MyCompany Inc” on another.
- The same goes for your business address. Be consistent with abbreviations vs. spelling out the street name, as well as punctuation.
- Ex: Are you at “123 Fake Street”, “123 Fake St.”, or “123 Fake St”? Pick one, then don’t deviate from it.
- If you move, change the damn address on your listings!
- Consistency is also key with phone numbers. First, decide whether you want to use your main office line or a call tracking number.
- If you use a call tracking number, ensure it’s implemented via Dynamic Number Insertion and LocalBusiness schema to preserve consistency for search engines.
- Once you’ve selected a phone number, make sure you are consistent with how you write it.
- Ex: Opt for either “(212) 123-4567” OR “212-123-4567”, not a mix of both.
Many local citations also give you the opportunity to link to your website. Uniformity is vital here, too. If you own multiple domains, always link to the one you want your customers to visit and the search engines to display in the SERPs.
Why Does NAP Consistency Matter in SEO?
Building trust isn’t something you only have to do with your customers. Trustworthiness is also an essential component of good search engine optimization.
You need to show the search engines that you are a reputable business. There are lots of ways to do this (positive reviews, lots of backlinks, etc.), but what’s more elementary than an established Name, Address, and Phone number?
Having consistency in your NAP data is advantageous for a number of reasons:
Accurate, Up-to-Date NAP Information Means Better Search Rankings
Google scans a massive amount of data to deliver search results. The more consistent the information, the greater confidence the search engine bots have that it’s accurate. Inconsistencies reduce confidence, making businesses with inaccurate or incomplete NAP information less likely to rank.
Consistent NAP Is Critical for Visibility in Voice Search
Voice searches are hyper-local. Most voice search results are pulled from positions 1–3 in Google SERPs. Top 3 rankings are usually taken by companies whose NAP data is consistent across multiple business listings.
NAP Consistency Builds Consumer Trust
Today, only 30% of consumers highly trust companies. It is in the best interest of every business to be trustworthy from the get-go. That means providing reliable, accurate information upfront—especially about the basic stuff.
Nearly 70% of consumers report that they would not use a local business if they find incorrect information (such as a name, address, and/or phone number) on digital platforms.
Making NAP Info More Consistent Leads to More Referral Traffic
Local citations with backlinks can drive traffic to your website. You want referral visitors to see accurate information so they aren’t confused when they get to your site.
It is important to note that most citation backlinks are nofollow. This means they don’t directly improve SEO value. However, they can still drive traffic and build brand authority.
Consistency Creates Greater Visibility on Third-Party Websites
Haphazard local SEO efforts can lead to a business creating multiple listings on a single platform. This obviously isn’t ideal for users, plus it can make it difficult for the platform to know which listing to serve up in native searches on the site. NAP consistency eliminates this chaos, making it easy for users to find the correct business listing on third-party platforms and potentially driving website traffic and conversions.
Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. You expect the name and contact information for local businesses to be reliable. If a business isn’t at the right address or the phone number is disconnected, you’d probably think twice before hiring them.
That’s why consistency in local SEO NAP is such a rudimentary part of search marketing. It aligns with the basic expectations of users for the building blocks of your business identity and being able to find you in the digital space.
How to Check NAP Consistency
If you’ve read this far, you might be concerned about the state of your local citations. You should be, as we find that most businesses have room for improvement when it comes to managing their listings across digital platforms.
Run your business info through a digital presence management tool (like Yext), and you might be shocked at the sheer number of errors and discrepancies.
See what your business listings look like at localseoscan.com.
Thankfully, Yext and other data aggregators give you the ability to correct these issues en masse. Data aggregators allow you to manage business listings and local directory citations, distributing NAP info across the web.
As an added bonus, businesses with multiple locations can enhance their presence online by ensuring accurate business hours, setting consistent categories, uploading high-quality photos for all Google Business Profile listings, and more. This is great not only for NAP consistency and visibility in local search, but securing your brand identity as well.
One obstacle you might run into, especially if you have a long-running business or get a lot of local media coverage, consists of citations you can’t control. Yext and similar platforms’ APIs don’t extend to the online edition of your local paper, every organization that has given you an award or certification, etc.
Manually requesting edits to local citations outside your purview is a pain. Turning your local SEO over to a capable marketing agency can save you the time and hassle of managing online listings across the board, as well as wrangle your NAP information so it’s consistent.
Set Your Local Business SEO Strategy Up for Success
Do you want to dominate the local market? Of course you do. But before you can win a championship, you have to master the fundamentals.
We’ve seen a lot of so-called SEO “experts” say that minor errors and inconsistencies aren’t that big of a deal, that Google is “smart enough” to overlook these problems. That sounds like loser talk to us. At Twelve Three Media, we believe that giving search engines the right information, the first time, is what leads to better rankings and the best results.
Don’t go with an SEO agency that takes half measures and makes excuses for subpar performance. Our experts prioritize NAP consistency and attention to detail in updating and managing local citations.