NAP Consistency: Why Your Name, Address and Phone Must Match Everywhere

NAP consistency sounds technical. It is not. It means that your business name, address and phone number are written the same way wherever your business is listed: your website, your Google Business Profile, Yelp, Facebook, the yellow pages of your country.

Why does a different phone number on an old page matter?

For a very plain reason first: a customer who calls a number that no longer works goes to someone else. I put that before any ranking argument.

Then there is the search engine. Google says that prominence, one of its three local ranking factors, draws on information it finds about a business across the web, including directories. When that information disagrees with itself, it is a weaker signal than when it agrees.

Where do inconsistencies come from?

Almost always from the life of the business, not from a mistake:

• you moved, and three directories kept the old address;
• you changed phone provider;
• your name is "Dumas & Sons" in one place and "Dumas and Sons Plumbing" in another;
• a directory created a listing by itself from public data, and you never knew it existed.

Which directories should you check first?

The ones your customers use, which depends on your country and your trade. In the United States, I would look at Yelp, Yellow Pages, the Better Business Bureau, Facebook, Apple Maps and Bing. In France, PagesJaunes, Mappy and 118000.fr come before most of those.

Do not chase two hundred obscure directories. Ten accurate listings on sites people really visit are worth more than a hundred on sites nobody opens.

How do you check, in practice?

1. Write down your reference. One exact spelling of your name, one address, one phone number. This is what everything else must match.
2. Search each directory for your name and city. A search limited to one site does it: site:yelp.com "Your Name" Your City.
3. Compare the three items. Name, phone, address.
4. Fix on the directory itself. Each directory has its own "claim this business" or "suggest an edit" process.

A local citation checker automates steps 2 and 3, and checks again every week.

What will a tool not do for you?

I prefer to be direct about this. Many directories refuse automated reading of their pages. A serious tool tells you "this item could not be compared" instead of pretending everything is fine. And no tool can correct your listing on a directory that requires you to sign in and prove you own the business.

Summary

My opinion: this is the least glamorous part of local SEO, and one of the few you can finish in an afternoon.