The Importance of NAP Consistency for Local SEO

NAP is one of the parts of local search engine optimization (SEO) that many people aren't familiar with. They don't know what the acronym means or how important it is to have consistent NAP listings. To simplify things, NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number. It's a method of referring to websites that offer nothing but business listings. Your company's name, address, and phone number, among other things, go on those directories.

Many search engines use NAP listings when determining how to rank a website in their search results. Because of this, it's important to keep your NAP listing consistent for your digital marketing strategy. Here's how Yext recommends you use your NAP listings.

Essentially, yes, a NAP listing and a local listing are rather similar. However, when people talk about local listings, they mean Google My Business profiles and Yelp, or other similar options. NAP listings fall into this same category, but they are different because there are so many.

In all, there are over 200 different websites that offer NAP listings. The more that your company is listed, the better.

What's Included in a NAP Listing?

• Business Name

• Address

• Phone number

Basically, all NAP listings consist of the same three things: your business's name, your business address, and your company's phone number. Let's explore them in more depth.

Business Name

This is the legal name of your company. It needs to be accurate and not abbreviated in any form. That is unless you abbreviate the name of your business regularly and have it listed as such on your website. If the name on your website is Plumbing, Inc (just to use an example), then your NAP listings need to have it as Plumbing, Inc as well.

Address

Where is your business located? You shouldn't include P.O. boxes in your address instead, stick to your street address where customers and clients can find you. You can have a suite number in your address, as long as it's on your website.

Again, you must keep the address the same on your social media, website, and NAP listings.

Phone Number

How can people contact you if they have a question or want to hire your service? This phone number is their primary method of contact. It can be a cell phone number, a toll-free number, or a standard landline. You're good to go as long as it's the way to reach your business and matches all your other listings and website.

Of course, there is other business information that a NAP listing can include. Your company's website, fax number, social media account links, and a short description of your business often end up on these websites. Since you have control over what goes on them, filling out each NAP listing is important.

The more information you include, the more likely your listing will help improve where your company shows up in the search engine results, especially the local results.

In addition to improving your search engine results, your NAP listings can also bring in customers who prefer to use listings other than Google My Business. For this reason, you must be careful and ensure that you enter your information accurately.

When you have many NAP listings to put together, it can be easy to place the incorrect contact information in one accidentally. It could be a small typo in the address that makes the street name different, or you might have accidentally switched around some of the digits in your phone number. Both of these things, as well as others, can lead to inconsistent NAP information.

Another example takes place when your company moves to a different address. Some of your NAP listings and your website might have the newer, correct address. However, all of your older listings, which you haven't updated yet, have the old address. Now, your NAP listings are inconsistent — half of them are correct, and the other half isn't.

The search engines don't know which ones are right because bots run them. If their bots haven't had the chance to crawl your website recently to take in your new address, they will assume that the NAP inconsistencies indicate more extensive problems. This will remove some of your company's trustworthiness and lower your ranking.

For your company to have NAP consistency, all your information must be the same on every listing. This means your basic info, such as your name, address, and phone number, as well as your description and everything else, need to be exactly the same.

Yes, if your company moves or changes a phone number, you'll need to update your listings, or you'll get penalized by the search engine algorithms.

Having consistent NAP information is crucial if you want to end up on the first page of local search results.

The search engines need to ensure that the information they provide to users is accurate. This is particularly true for those who are looking up local listings. If someone searches for a restaurant near them and half of the businesses that appear in the results have shut their doors for good or are no longer at the addresses that the search engine has them at, then they will lose faith in that website. They'll go elsewhere to find this information.

As a result, the more NAP listings you have, and the more consistent they are, the better you'll show up in the rankings because the search engines will view your company as both open for business and trustworthy. These NAP listings also show the search engines that you want plenty of local traffic, especially if you use local SEO tactics and keywords on your website.

NAP Listings Provide Accurate Information

Regarding accuracy and consistency in NAP listings, there are a few things that can vary slightly from one listing to another. For example:

• Your phone number doesn't need to be formatted the same, but the digits should match.

• You can have "road" on one listing and "rd" on another without being penalized, as long as the rest is the same.

• Your description doesn't need to be exactly the same on every listing, but it should be similar. Any suite numbers should be included to help customers find your business, but they don't need to be formatted the same on every NAP site.

For the most part, your NAP listings need to ensure the same user experience, but there are a few variations in formatting that you can get away with.

How Can I Help the Search Engines Find My Company's Information?

Search engines verify the accuracy of your company's name, address, and phone number by sending their bots to crawl your website. Ensure your company's information is listed in an easy-to-find place to make it easier to crawl by the bots.

The bots will use this information to verify your listings on all NAP sites. As long as everything matches, you'll be rewarded with higher search results. If your business moves or has changed phone numbers, you first need to update your website and then your NAP listings.

The sooner you update everything, the less your search engine rank will go down due to the changes and possible inconsistencies.

If the thought of having to update hundreds of NAP citations sounds more like a nightmare than something that you'd do for fun, then we have a solution for you. Yext makes it easy to conduct NAP updates and allows you to add your company's location listing to even more NAP sites, thus increasing your search engine rank.

Our platform has many other tools as well, so you can do everything from improving the search function on your website to seeing who is going to your Google My Business page and other similar listings.

Sources:

• What is NAP in Local SEO? | Brightedge

• What is NAP Consistency? | Call Rail

• Why NAP & User Experience Are Crucial To Local SEO | Search Engine Journal