Import Builder
Import Builder/Guides/NAP consistency
Local SEO

NAP Consistency: Keep Your Name, Address and Phone the Same Everywhere

Your business details appear on Google, Apple Maps, Bing, Yelp, Facebook and dozens of directories. When they disagree, customers call old numbers and search engines have less reason to trust any of them. Consistency starts with one agreed version of the details.

What NAP means

NAP stands for name, address and phone number: the details that identify a business location. A listing of them on another site is often called a citation. Search engines compare citations to confirm where a business is and how to reach it, and people use them to decide where to go and who to call.

Consistent means the same details everywhere, not merely similar. Small differences are easy to wave away one at a time, but across dozens of sites they add up to a messy picture of where the business is.

Where inconsistencies come from

Name variations

Smith & Co, Smith and Company, Smith & Co Ltd. Or keywords added to the name, such as Smith & Co Plumbing London, which Google Business Profile's guidelines don't allow.

Address formatting

Street vs St, Suite 4 vs #4 vs Unit 4, a missing floor or building name, or the old address after a move.

Phone numbers

An old number, a call-tracking number on some sites and the main number on others, or a head-office number on a branch listing.

Old and duplicate listings

A listing created years ago by a former manager, or a second listing for the same location that nobody owns.

Data copied from other sites

Directories pull details from each other and from data aggregators, so one wrong source spreads.

Set one standard version

Write down the exact details once and treat them as the master record. Every listing gets copied from it, character for character.

  1. 1Name: the name on your signage and documents, without taglines, locations or keywords.
  2. 2Address: the format your postal service uses, with one agreed way of writing suites and units.
  3. 3Phone: one main local number per location, with the country code for international listings.
  4. 4Website: one URL per location, such as its own location page, used everywhere.

One master record, copied everywhere:

Name:    Smith & Co Plumbing
Address: 14 Market Street, Suite 2, Leeds LS1 6DT
Phone:   +44 113 496 0123
Website: https://www.smithandco.example/leeds

Fixing your listings

  1. 1Start with the listings you control and that people see most: Google Business Profile, Apple Business Connect, Bing Places, Facebook and your own website.
  2. 2Search for your business name, and separately for your phone number and old addresses, to find listings you didn't know about.
  3. 3Claim and correct each listing, or ask the site to remove duplicates.
  4. 4Fix industry directories and local sites next, then the data aggregators that feed other directories.
  5. 5Keep a spreadsheet of every listing, its URL, login owner and when it was last checked.

Listings tools such as Moz Local, Yext or BrightLocal push one record out to many directories and keep it there. They're worth it for many locations, but they're only as good as the data you give them.

Businesses with many locations

With ten or a hundred locations, the master record becomes a spreadsheet, one row per location, with a unique store code for each. The hard part is usually collecting accurate details from each branch or franchisee: someone abbreviates a street, another gives a mobile number, a third leaves the postcode blank.

Bulk uploads make the problem worse, because one bad column spreads to every location at once. Check the sheet before it goes anywhere: unique store codes, complete addresses, valid phone numbers, and websites that start with https://.

NAP checklist

One written master record per location
Business name without keywords, taglines or locations
Address in the postal format, suites written one way
One main phone number per location, the same everywhere
Google Business Profile, Apple, Bing and Facebook updated first
Old and duplicate listings found and fixed or removed
A list of every listing, who owns it and when it was checked
Details rechecked after any move or phone number change

Collecting details from every location?

Send each branch or client a form instead of a spreadsheet. The Google Business Profile bulk upload template and the Moz Local template check addresses and phone numbers as they're entered (and store codes and websites for Google), and download a file ready to upload.

Try the Google Business Profile template

Related Guides

Relevant Templates

Google Business Profile, Apple Business Connect, Bing Places, Yelp, Facebook, Moz Local, Yext and BrightLocal are trademarks of their owners. Import Builder isn't affiliated with any of them.