You’ll probably know how annoying it is to phone a business and find that the number you have is wrong. Or to rock up at a shop you’ve been to many times before to find that they’ve moved. In Local SEO, Name, Address, Phone (NAP) information is an important signal that Google uses to decide
You’ll probably know how annoying it is to phone a business and find that the number you have is wrong.
Or to rock up at a shop you’ve been to many times before to find that they’ve moved.
In Local SEO, Name, Address, Phone (NAP) information is an important signal that Google uses to decide if your business is legit, trustworthy, and worth showing to people looking for your services.
Having different information about your business plastered around the internet can cause Google to view your website with suspicion.
And that usually means your website won’t be as visible as it could be. Or, worse, that Google doesn’t show you to searchers at all.
This is why having a consistent Name, Address and Phone Number for your business is so important.
When search engines like Google search for businesses to show for particular searches, it’s cross-referencing hundreds, thousands, maybe more bits of information about your business.
It’s like having a credit check with a bank when applying for a loan.
You produce your name, phone number and address (usually the last 5 years of addresses), and the information you give is cross-checked against information held about you.
If anything is inconsistent, it gets flagged.
For search engines, inconsistent business information (whether that’s your address, phone number, even your business name) is a red flag that weakens the confidence search engines have in your business.
It’s not just search engines it can impact though.
About 80% of customers say they lose confidence in a business when they find incorrect or inconsistent phone numbers or contact details online.
Imagine a friend asks for a recommendation for a business.
You give them the details, your friend contacts them, but they find the details you gave them are wrong.
You’ve now become less trustworthy in providing good information.
That’s how Google works. Its job is to provide the best possible results based on a particular search.
If Google is unsure about your business (because the address on your website doesn’t match the one on a business directory, on Companies House or your Google Business Profile) it’s far less likely to rank you highly in SERPs.
This is partly anecdotal, because Google, not surprisingly, doesn’t tell us exactly how it ranks local websites. But in one study by SEMrush, businesses with consistent NAP details in online listings got 70% more calls than those with inconsistent information.
And just to be clear, when we say “NAP consistency”, we’re talking complete consistency across every listing you have online (which is why this can get difficult to manage).
One of the reasons we think businesses go wrong with NAP is because some of the consistencies you need can seem a little over the top, and are easy to forget.
Yes, having Ltd on your business name on Companies House or a business listing, but writing Limited on a social media account or Google Business Profile can be considered inconsistent NAP.
Whatever name you used to register your business, that’s how it should appear in every place it’s mentioned.
Again, this might seem a little overkill, but having one address say X street, and another say X St. is an inconsistency in the eyes of Google.
This is easily done.
You register a business phone number when you first start.
Years later, you move office and your phone number changes.
But now you’ve forgot about that business listing you set up. So you’ve got business information that doesn’t match.
How easy is it to write your business’ number as 0151 XXX XXX. Only then, on another listing that asks for it, to write your number as +44 151. Or to write your phone number with spaces in different places, or sometimes with none at all.
For business listings, you need to keep your business number’s format the same everywhere it appears.
Yes, we know, still being pedantic, but welcome to NAP consistency for Local SEO. Google uses a geocoder to recognise a postcode in the correct format. If you have a postcode appearing in one place as WT4 3OI and WT43OI in another, it could confuse search engines and hurt your rankings.
Again, this is easily done.
You set up your Google Business Profile at one address, then you move, but you don’t remove or edit the old Business Profile.
Now you’ve got a profile on Google that isn’t accurate.
The easiest way to manage consistent information for your business is to be organised from day one.
Build a master spreadsheet showing where your business is listed, and what information has been provided (and what format it’s been provided in)
Every time you add your business to a new directory or listing, add it to your spreadsheet, making sure all formatting is the same for every listing.
If you’re not sure about your NAP information or any listings you might be in, a simple way to find them is to search for your business’ name, plus your current postcode.
This will pull every reference Google can find of that combination, so you can check against your master list and add any you don’t already have.
Doing this also pulls any Google Business Profiles you have listed with that postcode, which could highlight any duplicate Business Profiles you weren’t aware of:
If you’ve ever moved office, run this same check against any previous postcodes you’ve had.
You can do the same thing with your business’s phone number and get the same result:
I’m not saying that having 100% consistent NAP information around the internet is suddenly going to see you appear in top spot for all your keywords or local SEO searches.
But, while NAP consistency may not be able to guarantee top spot, inconsistent NAP information can definitely cost you top spot in search results.
Google itself has written in its guidelines that businesses should “maintain consistent names and categories across all locations” when referencing the importance of NAP for local SEO.
Inconsistent NAP information can also prevent you from running local ads on Google, as it only wants businesses with consistent information to be able to advertise to protect customers.
And we’ve seen it ourselves with clients after completing local SEO audits that cleaning up NAP information and removing duplicate Google Business Profiles and directory listings led to an increase in enquiries.
Just think of it this way, if you want to be more visible online, wouldn’t it make sense to do whatever you could to make it easier for search engines to find, crawl and index pages?
And if that means keeping on top of your business’ Name, Address and Phone number across the internet, it’s got to be worth it.
If you’re not seeing the results you want from SEO as a local business, our Local SEO services could help.
We’ve got experts in optimising Google Business Profiles and NAP consistency who can clean up your business’s online profile and make you more likely to rank highly in SERPs for commercially relevant local searches.
If you want to learn more about making your local business more visible in SERPs, you can read our full Local SEO guide.
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