What does “NAP” even mean?

Introduction

It’s fair to say that a lot of SEO companies can use way too much marketing jargon when describing their services. One such term that you may have heard your seo agency use is the term “NAP”.

And if your business has ever invested in local seo, well you have probably heard of this term long before now.

So, without further ado let’s have a look at what the term NAP actually means.

 

So, what does term NAP actually mean?

NAP simply stands for the name of a business; the businesses address and the companies phone number- it really is that simple.

Now you’re probably thinking why is this so important when it comes to implementing SEO?

Well there’s a good reason for that, and that’s because Google and the other search engines want to return the best quality answers they can to a query.

And by having NAP correctly implemented allows the search engines, like Google, to have greater confidence that your business key contact details are correct.

Let’s look at an example, let’s say there are two local dentists, let’s call them dental practice A, and dental practice B for simplicity.

Now dental practice A has recently moved address, so the business has subsequently updated its website to reflect this, yet the companies Google My Business account has not yet been updated, and there are some old business citations that still state that the business is still at its old business address.

These means that the algorithms that Google uses, and the other search engines may get confused where the business actually is based! For example, is it at the old address or the new one?

Now take dental practice B, they have employed an SEO agency and they have gone through the website to make sure the NAP details are correctly implemented on the website. So, they have listed the companies NAP details in the footer of the website, as well as on the contact us page.

They have also gone through every single business citation as well for business B, that’s to make sure that the NAP information is consistent with the website.

The seo company has then made sure that the Google My Business account also has the correct NAP details for business B. So yes, that digital marketing agency has been busy little bees!

So just to reiterate the point here, business A has its NAP details split between its new address and old address. That’s while business B has its NAP details correct, that’s in the sense they all saying the same thing.

Now which business do you think Google will have greater confidence in, in terms that the business details are correct?

Of course business B, as that dental practice does not have any NAP information that is incorrect.

 

Make sure your businesses NAP details are kept up to date

So, here’s the point that we are getting at here, it’s really important to keep your businesses NAP details updated.

This is particularly important when you change address, or company phone number.

So if I get my businesses NAP information correct, will my business will get displayed on the first page of Google?

Not quite. The reason your business probably won’t get displayed on the first page of Google is because this is just one part of the SEO process.

For example, in SEO we refer to all the different SEO areas that we can improve as ranking signals, now its widely thought that Google takes into account over 200 different signals, that’s when working out how important your website is.

So, getting the NAP information correct is important, but its only a small slice of the cake.

 

Okay so what are business citations?

Let’s say you know the name of a business, yet you’ve forgotten its phone number, so you ask Google what’s the phone number to XYZ Ltd.

Google replies with an answer, and in the results will normally be loads of business directory websites which cite the businesses contact details.

 

Its these pages that we SEO’s refer to as business citations.

Our business simply hasn’t got the time, how much does your business charge for SEO?

Our digital marketing agency charges a monthly fee, this fee is solely dependent on how much competition your business faces.

So, for instance, let’s say you run a legal practice, such a business will normally face a high amount of competition online. So, if your business faces more competition often the standard of SEO set by your competitors will also be very high.

We would therefore need to evaluate your website, so if you would like to obtain a no obligation quote, then why not give us a call?