Local SEO PRO || Part 05||NAP – (Name Address, Phone Number) Citations

 NAP, or Name, Address, Phone Number citations are places on the web where three pieces of information about your business appear:

• Your Business Name 

• Your Business Address 

• Your Business Phone Number 

Google crawls these NAP mentions when it gauges your local search ranking, and they are hugely important to your local SEO ranking factor. To score highly with this factor, you must make sure your NAP info appears on as many reputable websites as possible and is accurate for every site it appears on. NAP citations are so important to Google that mismatched NAP data contributes to 41% of all ranking issues! Only real, physical location data counts, when it comes to Google’s assessment of NAP, not PO Boxes, or virtual offices.

 Make sure your NAP data is displaying on all the important local business sites such as Yelp and Trip Advisor. You can do this by claiming a profile there and filling out your information, so your NAP data will be accessible to Google when it crawls the relevant sections of the site. Don’t just stop there though, get your NAP data listed on as many high authority places as you can. The more places it appears, the more authority Google will assign to your business, and the better your local search ranking will be. Google checks all your NAP mentions them to assess your brand’s location and to make sure your business information is accurate.

 If Google sees a lot of correct NAP citations for your brand, they will give your business more priority in search, as you will appear to be who and where you say you are. Nap Citations can be tricky to build up and create but, there are some useful tools that will help make the job easier, as well as some strategies you can adopt, to achieve more NAP mentions.

PRO TIP: The easy way to review your NAP citations 

Tools like Loganix help you find out where your NAP data appears online, making it easier to see how many citations you have, and where your information is listed correctly. If you’ve not done this before but have had a business for a while, you’ll likely find you have a lot of incorrect listings. Identify all the places where you have outdated or incorrect NAP data, and make sure you update each one if you can. You’ll be able to change your own NAP information easily on sites like Yelp, but if you’ve been mentioned on a local community page by someone else, you’ll have to contact the owner of the page and ask them to update your info. Tools like Yext make updating your NAP data a whole lot simply, by automating the process, so you don’t have to manually re-enter your NAP information on every single site. As Yext is integrated with hundreds of sites, you can enter your NAP data once and let Yext update it on all sites it appears on.

PRO TIP: Get more local citations and links 

To build up NAP citations on relevant local sites, use Ahrefs Link Intersect tool to enter the URLs of several local brands and generate a report which shows you what sites are linking to them. You don’t have to search brands in your niche, any local brands will work, as all you are trying to do is find sites that reach out to your community. Look through these results to find websites with citation opportunities, where you can display your NAP data. Typical sites include local community pages, the Chamber of Commerce where many local businesses are listed, and local news or reviews sites. Other sites could be suppliers or producers, local figures, or bloggers. Some of these sites might also let you feature your link too. Once you have drawn up a list of sites where you can feature your NAP, follow up by reaching out and asking if they’d consider listing your business’s NAP data

DON’T MAKE THIS ROOKIE MISTAKE: 

Never post your NAP data as an image, including on your own website. Though it might look attractive, search engines won’t be able to crawl it and you’ll miss an opportunity to rank. When you include your NAP data on your site, make sure it’s on the header or footer of every page too..