What is NAP Consistency?
When a person is looking for information on the best products or services to purchase, search engines are designed to specifically look to provide them with local businesses. This is due to the fact that a search engine’s aim is always to provide its users with the most reliable and relevant information available, and it is important that your business is using NAP consistency to do this! So what is NAP consistency and how do you achieve applying it to your business? NAP is defined as the name, address and phone number of your business. Nap consistency is defined as the accuracy of the location of your business in the name, business listing, social media pages and on your website. This term falls part of any local SEO strategy and it is one of the most basic elements to ensure when it comes to improving your SEO!
Why Does NAP Need To Be Consistent?
The name, address and phone number of your business need to be consistent as it helps search engines to better align you with relevant search engine users. One of the most important things that a search engine will take into account when a user completes a search is to find the most relevant information, and this largely has to do with location. Location-based searches need to be consistent in order to provide users with relevant information and websites that offer data on products or services within a certain area. This is why it is so important for eCommerce stores as well as businesses that offer products and services to have their locations set out clearly!
An example of how NAP consistency can help a business can be seen when looking at how you yourself would search for something on a search engine. Let us say that you are after a new pair of hiking shoes. You would more than likely type into a search engine “Hiking shoes”, or something similar to this. A search engine will aim to provide you not only with good offers on hiking shoes but it will also base the results on your location!
How To Fix An Inconsistent NAP?
An inconsistent NAP means that the information you have provided on your website, your directories or even on your social media pages do not match with one another or are not present, leading to confusion about where you are located. Now, you may be concerned that NAP consistency would mean that every single lament of your address and phone numbers have to be exactly the same, with even the smallest change would make your NAP inconsistent. Search engines are luckily smarter than that and even if your phone number or address appears in a slightly different format on different pages, directories and social media accounts, search engines will still be able to understand where you are located. To make your NAP consistent better, it is always important to take this into account!
Is NAP Consistency Related to Local Citations?
A local citation refers to any data regarding your business name or contact information. Therefore, your local citations are definitely related to NAP consistency and should be considered when configuring your information. Both of these aspects are heavily integrated into local SEO and therefore can have a large impact on the visibility of a business online and the rankings that a website gets on search engine results pages. NAP citations should always be accurate and relevant to the specific company!
What Effects Does NAP Consistency Have on SEO?
When all elements of NAP are consistent across websites, directories and social media pages, it can be extremely beneficial when it comes to SEO! NAP consistency and SEO form a large part of a business’s information and can help search engines better correlate searches to the content that you have available. It has been proven that inconsistent NAP information is one of the leading issues that businesses face in terms of their SEO, with incorrect or different information posted on various web pages, social media accounts and online directories.
One of the main reasons for this is that when a location, phone number or business name is updated, you may not think to update all information across various services and sources. Many people assume that changing the information on their social media or just their website will be enough. This can be extremely detrimental to the visibility of your website and should be considered if any of the information you have loaded changes. NAP consistency effect on SEO is important to take into consideration, particularly if you are looking to increase your visibility on any search engine like Bing or Google!
How Can You Make Your NAP Consistency Better?
As you can see from the above information, NAP consistency is important for SEO and therefore it is a relevant thing to take into consideration. The following is a look at how you can make your NAP consistency better!
Set Up Your Business Information
Your business information should be easily available on all pages that relate to your company as well as in business directories. Having this information across a variety of different sources will allow search engines easily confirm the information, ensuring to them that you are a reliable source. Setting up this information across a variety of sources is an important aspect that needs to be taken into account when ensuring NAP consistency.
Ensure Consistency Across Locations
Your information may be on a number of different sources, and it is important to ensure that these sources are as accurate as possible. While search engines do consider that the data may be presented in different formats, it all needs to be correct! Having consistent NAP data across all web pages, social media accounts and directories will help to ensure that you are consistent across all locations!
What Factors Need To Be Taken Into Account When Ensuring NAP Consistency?
The following are a few factors to consider if you are looking to ensure that your business has an accurate and effective NAP consistency.
- Check that everything is correct: One of the biggest issues when it comes to NAP inconsistencies is that the name of a street or the number of a building does not match up. While search engines do take different formats into account, if you have something wrong with your name, address or phone number, this may cause you some issues. It is extremely important that all information matches up and is correct, so be sure to double-check this!
- When information changes, update everything: One of the leading reasons for having inconsistent NAP information is that a business will make changes to their name, address or phone number and not update all information. When these changes occur, you need to make sure that you update all the information across various services so that your NAP is not inconsistent. NAP consistency relies on information being accurate across many different platforms, from your website to the directories that you may appear in.
