NAP consistency is an important part of Google’s local search and local pack algorithms. This means that creating citations with his NAP consistently across Google Business Profile listings and other online directories and sites can impact your local rankings.
However, online directories and social bookmarking sites are used not only by Google, but also by humans, so having a consistent NAP is also important for the user journey.
Maintaining a high level of consistency and accuracy reduces the risk of mistakes being made when search engines mechanically process data.
It also reduces the risk of user friction when potential customers trying to contact your business encounter the wrong phone number, store hours, or email address.
And if Google finds 5 different versions of your store hours, which one will it believe?
Conflicting information can undermine Google’s trust in your location data. This does not equate to your listing being considered the best result for relevant queries.
Tracking where your critical business information resides and its accuracy can be a daunting task, even in one place.
Managing multiple locations with multiple addresses and phone numbers can become even more complex, even with enterprise software.
This job is also changing as Google wants business owners to manage their Google Business Profile (GBP) from the Google Maps interface and manage large multi-location businesses from the Business Profile Manager. .
When the user journey begins
Many people think that the user journey and brand experience begins when a user makes the first call, emails, or spends significant time on a company’s website.
However, the journey begins much earlier.
According to Google data, there are 5 touchpoints that often lead to a purchase/positive action on your site.
- I used a search engine.
- Visited shops and other places.
- Visited a retailer’s website or app.
- Visited another website or app.
- used a map.
The user journey begins when they first see your brand in search results lists, local packs, maps, and brick-and-mortar stores.
Consistent NAPs are important here, as users need consistent information to move forward on their journey.
We often assume that users find local businesses and brands through our website, guest posts and outreach, and listings on Google Business Profiles.
However, users find our brands through various online portals, including directories that create quotes and lists.
Influence the user journey during the search stage
When a user performs their first search, it’s their first chance to make an impression and be part of their journey.
When displayed prominently within a local pack or SERP, users should click to navigate to content that provides value and meets their intent.
Lazy local pages help no one
Often when a website “localizes” it means generating local content and local pages.
These are done with varying degrees of effort, care, and detail, but ultimately lazy local pages help no one.
A lazy local page is an induction page. Thin pages that provide little value to users and exist solely for the purpose of ranking for local search terms.
Google doesn’t like doorway pages (due to poor user experience) and rolled out a “ranking boost” algorithm for doorway pages in 2015.
Possum’s update in 2016 also took some steps to combat low quality and spam, but it’s a persistent tactic. In many areas they are still effective (until better ones come along).
Google’s official support documentation defines a gateway as:
“A site or page created to rank highly for specific search queries. A user’s search results may show multiple similar pages, each result directing the user to essentially the same destination.” It’s bad for users because it can lead them to, and it can also lead them to intermediate pages that aren’t as useful as their final destination.”
Even if all the content on these pages were rewritten to avoid duplication, there would be no value in conveying the exact same message to different cities.
However, this is niche dependent, and in some smaller niches Google may still rank the landing page due to lack of competition or other viable options.
This boils down to two concepts that Google uses in their Quality Rater Guidelines document. “Beneficial purpose of the page” and whether the page is “suitable for querying”.
Provide content that suggests your business covers physical locations, even if it doesn’t meet the physical local side of the query, providing value (and positive (reputable value proposition), Google is invalid. For other options that meet physical location preferences, Google ranks content.
Create pages with high local value
Certainly, it’s much easier to create high-value local pages for businesses that have physical stores in their target locations.
But that doesn’t mean companies with intangible regionally focused products and services can’t do it.
Google’s Search Quality Rating Guidelines define content in two parts:
- Main content.
- support content.
This is how local search looks.
when someone searches in london [plumbers in london]Google should split the query into both main and supporting sections and look for intent.
This can be achieved through the functionality achieved in Hummingbird and RankBrain updates.
When [plumbers] as the main part of the query and from looking at the search results page for [plumbers]Google sees a single dominant interpretation of the query and it is someone looking for plumbers (services), local business websites, aggregators, map packs (local to my IP), and Google’s Returns a combination of local service carousels.
[in london] is a modifier.
This is a secondary signal to enforce the accuracy of the desired results to Google.
Add this modifier for me (using [plumbers in horsforth]), Google appears to have given more weight to aggregators that list multiple plumbing companies within a region and less weight to individual company sites.
This makes sense from a user’s perspective, as it’s easier to access multiple options with a single click than multiple clicks.
The main content of your website should reflect the products/services you offer, and supporting content elements can add value and topical relevance to the location.
This can be implemented in a non-commercial manner through a blog, as a guide, or as an additional resource.
NAP consistency
As mentioned earlier, NAP consistency is important as a directory listing, and the citations you create aren’t just used by search engines. Potential customers will also find these details.
Inconsistent or inaccurate NAPs can lead to user dissatisfaction and lost leads.
Common Reasons for Inconsistent NAPs
In our experience, inconsistent NAPs can be caused by many human errors and business changes, including:
- Change the company address and do not update previously created citations, directory listings, etc.
- Have a store address separate from your company’s registered address, and use both online.
- Generate different phone numbers for attribution tracking purposes.
All of the above can not only cause local SEO issues, but also many user experience issues. Poor user experience leads to lost sales and brand damage.
User experience extends beyond local packs and SERPs to websites, how local journeys are managed, and whether all local intents can be met.
Being able to track and accurately report the success of your marketing efforts is critical.
However, there are cases of “over-reporting” and “over-attribution” in some cases, especially when it comes to local SEO.
Google Local Pack: User Experience and Attributes
Google’s Local Pack runs on a different algorithm than traditional organic search results and is highly dependent on the user’s location when searching.
Google Business Profiles have attribution issues, often many clicks from GMB listings are categorized as direct traffic instead of organic traffic in Google Analytics.
To avoid this, use parameters.
?utm_source=GMBlisting&utm_medium=organic
This parameter does not cause NAP/citation consistency issues, so you don’t have to worry about it.
Consistent NAPs mean they are more likely to appear in the local pack. Research shows that you’re more likely to get a higher percentage of clicks on your results page if you’re in a local pack.
If you are likely to get a lot of clicks, it means that many users expect pages to load quickly and information that stands out to satisfy their search intent.
directory attribute
This is a more common problem I run into when working on the agency side, and one I’ve also been asked to implement when working on the client side.
I know of organizations that generate a unique phone number for each directory they submit their business to in order to track their marketing efforts.
- Strong Points: You can measure the ROI of your marketing efforts fairly accurately.
- Cons: Many citations will be published with inconsistent NAPs.
Also, as a sort of “additional service”, many directories prefer to generate a list of Google Business Profiles based on the data you enter.
This will generate multiple Google Business Profile listings for each location, which may have different phone numbers and different map pin locations.
This negatively affects the user experience. Because there are multiple choices for one place and he is the only one that is correct.
This can be addressed by declaring the false listing to be a duplicate of another listing and asking Google to merge them. For more information, see How to remove or merge duplicate Google Business Profile lists.
Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
