What is NAP Consistency?

What Does NAP Stand For?

NAP is an acronym that stands for “name, address, phone” and is critical when it comes to local SEO. The individual pieces that make up NAP have been important for a long time, however, ensuring your business is consistent across digital platforms and the web is more important than ever.

What is NAP Consistency?

NAP consistency refers to ensuring your name, address, and phone number are accurate and consistent across all relevant platforms and profiles on the internet. If a company changes their phone number or moves to a new location, maintaining that consistency is achieved by updating those pieces of information quickly in all relevant places.

When Does This Matter?

NAP is now a major factor when it comes to local SEO rankings. Since search engines like Google take both the location of the business as well as the searcher into consideration, NAP is one primary way to confirm the relevance of the two. If someone in your area is searching for your services and you don’t have an address on your website and profiles but your competitor does, search engines are going to consider their business more relevant to the searcher than yours because you’re not providing that location-based information.

How Can You Stay Consistent?

Make sure your information is up to date and visible across the internet. That includes on your website, directory listings, social media platforms, and anywhere else that information is requested or required. If you’re not updating your information manually, some sites take the information it can find about your business from any available resources across the web. If you have inconsistent or out of date information online, you will run into problems across multiple platforms. Keep your company’s online reputation strong with NAP consistency.