Surprisingly, quite a high number of businesses have incorrect errors and variations of their NAP scattered across different listings. Many businesses, even those with a strong online presence, are consistently shocked to learn that their business information is inconsistent across the world wide web.
Truth of the matter is that there are many businesses that share the same name, or have incredibly similar names. There is only one way for a search engine to determine, with 100% confidence, that a listing is your business – and that is a completely consistent NAP across all listings.
We advise that you use your complete United States Postal Service (USPS) approved address information for your business listings.
Note: when we say, 100% consistent, we mean down to every character – including spaces, punctuation and abbreviations. For example: “MyArt”, “MYArt”, MyArt Co”, MyArt Company” and “MyArt Co.” are all different. Similarly, with the address: “Street”, “St”, “ST,” “St.” are different enough to throw Google off, hurting your SEO and lessening your opportunity of customer interaction.. Having your business information be 100% consistent across the web plays an absolutely critical role in your over SEO performance. There are few things that Google loves more than consistency. Having consistent information will allow Google to accurately determine each listing is yours, and ensure the backlinks from the listings add to your domain authority.
So, what can you do to ensure your NAP is up to date across the web?
1) Claim and update your Google My Business. This is undoubtedly the most important NAP component. Make sure your Google My Business NAP is the exact same as your USPS address – from here, you can use your GMB as your reference.
2) Make sure that your NAP is listed in multiple places on your website, including your footer, contact page, and potentially your “About Us” page. Again, your website NAP needs to be identical to your GMB NAP.
3) Ensure your NAP is in all of your social media profiles, and is identical to your GMB NAP, and your website NAP.
4 ) Check and update the top business directories most commonly used by search engines and applications, including: Apple Maps, Bing Places, Linkedin, Better Business Bureau, Foursquare, Trip advisor, Yelp.
5) Industry specific directories – websites like Angine, Healthgrades, , Open Table, Mechanic Advisor, etc.
A quick Google Search will produce endless lists of the business directories. Making sure they’re up to date can be quite the challenge, but it is well worth the undertaking. Whether you decide to manually update them yourself or use a paid service, be assured the effort is worth it. A couple things to consider – many of the listings require the business owner to claim the listing and use two factor authentication to enable logins and updates. Secondly, many businesses do not change their listing information frequently so getting locked into an ongoing service may not be worth it for some. If you use a service, make sure that when you end your service, your business listings are not affected, as some services delete the business listings they posted if you cancel their agreement.
Get listed, be consistent
We talked a lot about Google My Business - are you up to date?: Google My Business is a Must Have
