Okay, let’s start with a simple exercise: Google your business name. Is the name, address and phone number (NAP) of your business listed accurately everywhere on the internet? Can you even efficiently look “everywhere?” That's a daunting task, it could be putting a big dent in your online ranking, reputation, and revenue!

Consider this: 37% of customers ignore a business with inconsistent information, while 32% avoid buying from a business that has inaccurate contact information listed online, according to a report by Local Search Association (LSA).

And guess how much it costs to have wrong, missing, or incomplete business information? More than $10 billion in revenue!

Customers Don’t Trust Businesses with Inaccurate Info

It’s hard enough to show up in a potential customer’s search, but when you don’t provide the right information they need to do business with you, you are basically asking them to take their money elsewhere.

Imagine the frustration of dropping by a store to shop only to find that their hours of operation are different from what’s listed online. Or trying to reach a business on a number that won’t connect. No Almost 73% of consumers lose trust in a local business when they find incorrect information about it online!

Inconsistencies Confuse Search Engines

Multiple NAP variations not only irk your prospects but mislead search engines as well. These variations often get indexed as separate business entities, while search engines may even treat them as duplicate local pages of your business. Because these pages will eventually compete to outrank each other, it will hurt your search rankings. You don’t want to compete with yourself, so make sure you have one page with the correct information.

Also, your customer reviews may get divided between different listings, which could damage your online reputation. Google can even identify these as ‘spam listings’ and penalize your business by blocking it out completely.

Search engines favor consistent and high-quality citations, meaning any mention of your business on the web when it comes to evaluating and ranking your business website. The higher the number of citations from high-authority websites, the bigger your chances of being found by potential customers. And, it also makes your business more authentic in the eyes of Google and other search engines.

What’s Causing Inconsistencies?

When listing your business online, inconsistencies may creep in unintentionally. This can happen for different reasons — maybe you’ve lost the username/password to a directory, maybe the email linked to a listing is no longer in use, maybe the person who set up your listings didn’t do as good a job as you hoped, and so on.

Other reasons why your citations don’t match:

  • Your NAP may have changed overtime but didn’t update in all listings
  • Your business name is different from your trade name
  • The data aggregators have collected inaccurate or old information about your business
  • Your citation campaign hasn’t been executed with the goal of maintaining consistent NAP

While most of these errors arise from having to manually manage the online directory listings, sometimes they happen due to an increasing number of new directories. It can be difficult to keep track of them all but, if you are not getting your business listed in these, it could cause a drop in your local search rank. The more inbound links your site gets from these directories, the better. The positive reviews that show up in the listings will boost your rankings as well as the customers’ trust in your brand.

How to Maintain a Consistent and Accurate NAP

Now that you know your NAP needs to be correct across the web, it’s imperative that you understand how to maintain consistency across your website, Google and Bing Places, local directories like Yelp and Yellow Pages, listings, social media pages and literally anywhere else your business is mentioned.

Maintaining correct NAP information across the web is key to your local SEO success. But, it’s not a one-time job. Whenever you change your business name, address or phone number, you need to update your listings. It’s also important to make sure that the citations are uniformly written, styled and formatted. For instance, if your business address shows up as Earl Street on one site and Earl St. on another, search engines could identify this as an inconsistency.

The main challenge lies in the fact that it takes a great deal of time to log into each source to check for accuracy in every listing. Not surprisingly, half of small business never update their online listings due to lack of time. And, this negatively impacts their search ranking.

Fortunately, there are tools that can help you manage the consistency and accuracy of your NAP info without having to rummage through each listing manually. New Ange Media can help you determine where your inconsistencies are using our Digital Footprint SEO Audit Tool. Get your complimentary audit today to see the status of your NAP and more!

Now that you know more about your NAP and how important it is to your overall online presence, make sure it’s accurate and constantly updated to help Google push your website to the front page of search results while also making it easier for your customers to find you.

If you’d like to speak to a New Angle expert about how to improve your overall online presence and Digital Footprint, contact us today!

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