What Is a Business NAP Consistency? Learn What it is & Why it is Important

Business NAP Consistency Key Takeaways:

• Local SEO is important for increasing sales, and local citations are a crucial component of local SEO.
• NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) consistency is essential in local citations to improve a business’s local SEO.
• NAP consistency means using the exact same NAP information in every local citation.
• Inconsistent NAP can confuse search engines and negatively impact a business’s ranking.
• To check for NAP consistency, search for your business name along with your location on search engines and inspect the citations for consistency.
• Inconsistencies in NAP citations may occur when websites create citations without permission, requiring manual correction.
• Fixing NAP inconsistencies is time-consuming, and hiring professionals or agencies is recommended.
• Maintaining NAP consistency allows search engines to become familiar with a business and improve its ranking.
• apnTech offers listing services to help businesses establish consistent NAP citations and improve their local SEO.

Do you want to make more sales? If so, you should strongly consider pursuing local SEO. Of course, if you’re going to pursue local SEO, you’ll need to obtain local citations.

A local citation is essentially a mention of a business’s contact info and, in particular, includes the business’s name, address, and phone number. This is often shortened to the acronym NAP.

Listing the NAP on different directories and review sites is vital to improving a business’s local SEO. However, you can’t just do it willy-nilly. You have to maintain NAP consistency from site to site.

What is NAP consistency? What is NAP SEO? Why does it matter? We’re going to review that and more below.

What Is NAP Consistency?

NAP consistency refers to always utilizing the same NAP in every local citation that’s created.

The exact same information needs to be used every time. So, if you referred to your business as “Ted’s Tires” in one citation, you need to refer to it as that in every citation. You can’t call it “Ted’s Tires and More” or simply “Ted’s”.

Doing this will confuse search engines, thus preventing them from giving your online identity the credit it deserves. In fact, it might even cause search engines to penalize your business’s ranking.

As such, you need to be sure that your name, address, and phone are exactly the same from citation to citation.

Checking for NAP Consistency

Now that you know what NAP consistency is, you might be wondering how to check for it. The answer is as simple as Googling your business name along with your business location. For instance, you might Google “Ted’s Tires Atlanta.”

This will return all of the links in which your local citations are included. From there, you can manually inspect them to determine whether they’re consistent.

Note that, in some cases, websites will create citations for you without first asking. These very often lead to inconsistencies, so you need to dig deep and ensure that every single citation has been found and corrected.

Fixing NAP Inconsistencies

Next, let’s move on to the subject of fixing NAP inconsistencies. Simply put, it’s a lot of work. You have to create accounts for all of the websites that list your business information and then edit those citations manually.

Or, you could hire someone else to do it for you. Unless you have dozens of hours on your hands, the latter option is advised. Whether it’s a local digital marketing company, an agency, or otherwise, they’ll ensure that your NAP Google My Business standing is on the up and up.

NAP Consistency Is Vital

If you want your website to rank for local SEO, NAP consistency is vital. By maintaining consistent NAP, you allow search engines to gain familiarity with your business, and thus improve your ranking on those search engines.

Need help with local citations? If so, apnTech has you covered. We offer listing services for businesses in all industries, helping them to establish themselves in their local markets.

Contact us today to discuss your needs!