What Is NAP Consistency, and Why Is It Important for Local SEO?
Your local business might suffer if false information is spread online. A company’s local search visibility and customer confidence might be jeopardised by NAP (name, address and phone number) citations that are inaccurate or inconsistent.
NAP Consistency: What Is It?
According to a local SEO expert at DigiMore, all mentions of your company’s name, address and phone number (NAP) on the web should match. You should have a consistent data-sharing experience across all of your online profiles, whether it’s Facebook, a business directory or a review site.
If you’re having trouble getting in touch with someone, it can be as easy as forgetting to include a digit in their phone number or postal code. This is because inaccuracies introduce diversity into your data, which weakens your consistency.
The Importance of Maintaining NAP Consistency for Local SEO
Although NAP data may not seem like it has much of an impact on local SEO for small business, this is not the case. According to a recent survey, citations have been confirmed as a top-five ranking factor for both local pack and organic search results. There must be no inconsistencies or errors in the data for it to be useful to search engines and humans.
An Article’s SEO Rankings May Suffer If It Has Incorrect or Outdated Citations
Google needs a large enough data set to ensure that the assessment it has made of a local firm is accurate. A high volume of citations that all have the same NAP data might convince Google that the company’s listing is accurate. Because of this, it’s also allowed to share the data with those who use search engines.
However, red flags are raised if NAP data varies from one reference to the next. When the data doesn’t match up, Google knows that not all of the information is right. As a result, Google cannot guarantee the accuracy of the results shown in search results.
Unreliable NAP Causes Damage Accessibility to Voice-Activated Searches
Google needs to know that it can trust the information you give about your business so that it can show relevant results in both traditional search results and newer, more natural ways to search, like voice search. Voice search is an important way to find new customers for your brick-and-mortar store that you shouldn’t overlook.
DigiMore has collected data that shows that about 20% of adults use voice searches every day, and most of them (80%) get their information from the first page of organic SERPs.
We all know that NAP information plays a big role in how well a website does in organic search, and we also know that having consistent information greatly improves how well a website performs in voice search.
Final Words
You don’t need to sweat the little stuff, like using slightly different acronyms in your listings, since today’s search engine algorithms are highly sophisticated. Focus on the essentials, such as using the right company location and phone number, rather than these formatting issues. And in case you need more assistance, go for local SEO services through your one-stop solution: DigiMore.
