NAP for Local Business: Why It’s Vital For Local SEO Visibility

In digital marketing, NAP means more than just taking a little time to doze off during the day. This three-letter acronym holds more power to establish a successful local online presence. Optimising your NAP citation should be at the top of your local SEO checklist if you want to pick up local traffic.

Why? It’s just like planning a trip.

Your NAP serves as the signpost to help people reach their final destination–your website. Search engines act as GPS to help people navigate their way to your website. If search engines like Google don’t have your correct NAP information, you leave your visitors stranded and lost.

In this post, we’ll examine the importance of NAP for local businesses and share tested strategies for improving your NAP citation.

What Is NAP for Local Business?

NAP is your business’ Name, Address, and Phone Number, which typically appears on online directories and local business review sites. This information is very important for local users so they can easily find and contact your business.

The only problem is not all local businesses pay attention to its importance. A consistent NAP citation across all your online listings is a positive indicator for search engines because they want to give users the most accurate information about your business.

If your citation is missing one of three pieces of information, it is called partial NAP.

Importance of NAP Consistency for Local SEO

NAP inconsistencies could be the obstacle that prevents your potential customers from talking business with you. One wrong number in your phone number or failure to update your old address can confuse visitors and send search engines down a spiral.

For example, if you have a business called “Happy Kidz Playground,” but your Google Business Profile shows “Happy Kid’s Playground,” minor typos like this can confuse your visitors, leading to poor user experience. Additionally, if Google finds inconsistencies across all your listings, you can lose Google’s trust and send your website lower on local SEO rankings.

But before you go ahead and review your NAP data, let’s clarify what things are considered NAP inconsistencies.

All directories have their way of formatting your NAP data. Google may display your phone number as (01) 2345 6789, while other directories use a different format, +1 2345 6789. Or Google can abbreviate street to “St.” while others use the complete word “Street.” In this case, it doesn’t matter. The formatting of your data will depend entirely on the directory, and it will not count as an inconsistency.

Example of Good NAP Consistency

Here’s how your NAP should look for all your listings. This example is from a local business here in Australia called Floral Expressions.

Google Business Profile

Floral Expressions’ Website

White Pages

Yellow Pages

Yelp

Notice how they keep their NAP data consistent and accurate in all listings?

Google will love you if you do this for your website’s listings because it shows your credibility and makes your business easier to discover and rank in local searches.

Tips on Creating Consistent NAP Data for Local Businesses

If you’ve never considered creating your NAP data or haven’t kept up with your current one, now’s the time to do it. Optimising your NAP will enhance your business website’s local search visibility, improve user experience, and build trust with Google.

Analyse Current NAP SEO Situation

First things first, make a manual audit of your NAP data on every page of your website. Yes, it might take a lot of your time, but doing this now will prevent you from having to deal with it in the future.

Scan every page of your website and note inconsistencies in your NAP. Make the necessary changes and ensure you’re displaying accurate information on all your web pages. Take every opportunity to include NAP on all your pages. Put it on the website’s header and footer so it can be seen on all pages, and make sure it matches.

Another thing is social media profiles. Your social media profiles may also contain NAP inconsistencies you didn’t realise were important before. If you have one primary business account on every social media platform, like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram, it is better because your data will be easier to update.

Ensure Visibility On High-Impact Business Listings

Make your presence known to the online world by listing your business in the top local and most impactful business listings. Three of them have been mentioned previously: LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram Business.

However, your Google Business Profile is the most important thing to set up first. According to recent statistics, almost 91% of online users worldwide use Google as their main search engine. Now, you want those users to see accurate and well-optimised NAP information when they search for your business.

Other essential business listings to consider are:

• Bing Places for Business
• Yelp for Business
• Apple Maps
• Yellow Pages
• Super Pages
• True Local

Integrate LocalBusiness Schema Markup

Use Google’s LocalBusiness schema so Google can easily find key information about your business, including your NAP data and URL. Pick the right category that best describes your business so Google can better understand what your business does. You want to include as much information as needed, such as the NAP, description, logo, image, opening hours, URL, Google Maps link, etc. Using this schema markup will help improve your website’s ranking in the SERPs.