NAP Consistency for Local SEO: Why It Matters

In the competitive world of local SEO, small details can make a huge difference! One of the most critical factors that businesses often overlook is NAP consistency – ensuring your Name, Address, and Phone Number are the same across all online listings.

Did you know that inconsistent NAP information can confuse search engines and lower your local rankings? According to a study by BrightLocal, 73% of consumers lose trust in a business with incorrect listing information.

In this article, we’ll break down:

• Why NAP consistency matters for your local SEO plan
• How inconsistencies can hurt your rankings and credibility
• Best practices to maintain NAP consistency
• Tools and strategies to audit and fix incorrect citations

What Is NAP Consistency in Local SEO?

NAP consistency for local SEO involves your name, address, and phone number being consistent across local directories and citations listings. 

This is important as search engines like Google will use your NAP information to verify whether a business is legitimate or not. But not just Google, your customers are also trying to figure out whether they can trust you or not, and NAP consistency is a big factor. 

There are two types of citations, structured and unstructured. Structured citations are formal mentions of your NAP on directories like Yelp and TrustPilot, whereas unstructured citations are mentions of your NAP on external blogs and newsletters. 

Both types of citations are important for NAP consistency across the web, although structured citations are generally considered more impactful to local search rankings.  

Why Is NAP Consistency Important for Local SEO?

Citations act as local SEO backlinks to your website. NAP consistency across your citations is important for SEO as they help to increase the trust that Google holds in your business. This, in turn, will increase the domain rating of your website, allowing you to rank higher, and for more competitive keywords, in the SERP (search engine results page). 

Not only does NAP consistency increase Google’s trust, but also your customers! If your customers see your business with multiple names, addresses, or phone numbers, they are less likely to trust you and you may lose out on a sale. Your customers may also get the wrong contact information for your business, again leading to you losing a customer. 

Creating this solid foundation of NAP consistency can be difficult at times. Especially when your business rebrands or moves locations. 

Next, we will tackle some common issues that can hinder your NAP consistency for local SEO. 

Common Issues That Hurt NAP Consistency

Here are some common issues that can hurt your NAP consistency:

• Variations in Business Name (e.g., “Joe’s Pizza” vs. “Joe’s Pizzeria & Grill”)
• Address Formatting Differences (e.g., “Street” vs. “St.”)
• Phone Number Changes and inconsistent formats
• Duplicate Listings causing confusion

For those of you that are worrying about your NAP changing due to external factors (such as moving address), just be sure to reach out to your existing citation directories and ask if they can change the listing. If not, don’t worry, as most citations run out within the year, so you can update them with your new NAP then! 

We will go through more strategies for fixing NAP consistency issues in the next section. 

How to Check and Fix NAP Consistency Issues

Step 1: Audit Your Existing Listings

The first step is to do an audit of your current listings. There are many tools available to help you with this including Ahrefs, Moz Local, SEMrush etc. I personally go into the “referring domains” tab in Ahrefs to see what directories my business is listed on. 

You want to prioritise your most important listings first like your Google Business Profile, Yelp, Bing, Facebook etc, as these will get the most visitors. You can then move onto the ones that get lower numbers of traffic. 

Step 2: Correct NAP Inconsistencies

Found all your NAP consistency issues? Great! Now it’s time to manually reach out to each of the directories and get them to change your NAP information. Just go onto each website and find the email address of that site. With some directories, you may just have to login and you will be able to change it yourself! 

Step 3: Maintain Ongoing NAP Consistency

Keep your NAP information updated when rebranding, relocating, or changing contact details using the steps above, and monitor your listings every month using SEO tools to check whether your listing has run out or not. 

Best Practices for Maintaining NAP Consistency

Finally, here are a few best practices to keep in mind for maintaining NAP consistency:

• Standardise your business formatting by using the same NAP everywhere. This includes trying not to use variations of your business name. 
• Use Schema Mark-up to help Google identify your business as a local business.
• Update your Google Business Profile regularly (including your NAP if it changes!)

Conclusion

NAP consistency is a small but powerful factor in local SEO. Without it, search engines and customers may struggle to find and trust your business. By auditing, correcting, and maintaining uniform NAP details, you’ll improve your local rankings, visibility, and credibility.

Stay ahead in local SEO by keeping your business details consistent everywhere!