NAP stands for name, address and phone number. Basically, it’s the basic information your customers will need to know if they want to do business with you.

You’re probably thinking, “Great! I’ve got all that information on my website. Job done. I have reached enough potential customers!” Well, it’s not that easy.

Your website may be up to date and may think that digital marketing isn’t for you or your business. But what about local listings through search engine optimization (SEO)? Like with local directories, if you haven’t kept tabs on these areas on your website or on social media, you might find that someone entered your phone number with a 3 instead of an 8 or that your old address is still listed. This will dramatically affect your local search ranking.

We’ll go over what NAP is, why it’s important for your business, and how you can ensure your NAP is consistent across the web.

What is NAP SEO? Why is it important?

NAP goes by many names. If you’ve never heard of NAP before, you may have heard of NAPW (name, address, phone number, website), or NAPU (name, address, phone number, URL). Basically, whichever you prefer it’s your business’ contact information.

It’s important that this information is correct across the internet, primarily so your customers can actually find you through local SEO. However, it’s also important because Google and other search engines take NAP consistency into account when they calculate search rankings.

What is NAP consistency and why does it matter?

So, what is NAP consistency? Simply put, it’s a measure of how well your business’ NAP information is consistent across various listings. Suppose you’re an electrician and your business is listed like this on your website:

Dave’s Electrical Contractors, Inc.

1234 Main Street

Smallville, KS 12345

888-765-4321

https://www.daveselectrical.com

So far, so good. But let’s say you have a Facebook page and your listing looks like this:

Dave’s Electrical Contractors

1234 Main St.

Smallville, KS 12345

888-765-4321

https://www.daveselectrical.com

The information is still accurate, but it’s not exactly the same. This won’t kill your search ranking. It won’t help it, either. But now let’s say your business is listed on Google like this:

DEC

1234 Main St.

Smallville

888-765-4821

https://www.daveselectrical.com

Wow! The name isn’t even recognizable and the phone number is wrong. A listing like that can really hurt your business’ search ranking. This is because Google’s algorithms will recognize the inconsistency and consider your NAP information unreliable.

You may be a master electrician with 20 years of experience, but it won’t matter because no one will find you in the first place. That’s why it’s so important to ensure your business listings have NAP consistency.

What are citations and how do I find them?

A citation is anywhere that your business’ NAP information is listed online. There are two types of citations: formal and informal.

Formal citations are the most important ones to keep track of. These are the listings you see on Google, Facebook, Yelp, and other websites that have specific listings. A good way to make sure these are accurate is to claim your business on those websites.

Methods of claiming your business vary depending on the website, but most major listings like Google and Yelp provide links for business owners to click. When you click on a link to claim your business, you’ll then go through an identity verification process to make sure it’s actually your business.

This can be challenging, particularly if your business has been around a long time and is listed on many websites. Unfortunately, the alternative is to rely on members of the public to keep your NAP information accurate. Even if they do, they’re liable to make typos or use abbreviations that can hurt your search rankings.

The other type of citation, an informal citation, is one that’s not an official directory listing but appears somewhere on a website. For example, if your business was reviewed by a local newspaper, there’s a good chance your name and phone number are listed in the article.

These citations can be difficult to fix. In fact, the only thing you can do is make sure you’re providing the right information whenever you’re asked. Even if you do, informal citations won’t get updated when you change addresses or phone numbers. Fortunately, this kind of citation isn’t very important for search engine rankings.

What are aggregators? Why are they important?

There are many local business listings on the web. Search for any city’s business listings like “San Diego business directory” and you’ll find a site or three that specializes in listing local businesses.

The same is true for specific industries. For example, lawyers have their own nationwide directory. Since these are niche sites, they don’t have the resources to obtain NAP information on their own, nor do they get enough traffic to depend on the public to keep their information accurate.

These sites depend on larger sites to keep their records up to date. These larger sites are called aggregators and your search ranking will live or die based on whether their information is correct.

This might sound like bad news, but it really isn’t. Imagine the headache of having to search for every possible niche site that might list your business and asking them to change it. You can get the same result just by contacting a handful of aggregators.

Here are some of the biggest aggregators you’ll want to look at:

• Infogroup – They work with some major GPS manufacturers. You want to make sure they have your address right.
• InfoUSA – InfoUSA is one of the biggest aggregators out there. They specialize in B2B listings, but also provide information to many other sites.
• Factual – They provide business listings to over 6,000 companies.
• Thomson Local – This is a smaller aggregator, but they specialize in local businesses.
• Acxiom – Another second-tier aggregator, but they make it very easy to update your business’ NAP info.
• Neustar Localeze – This service is made specifically for small businesses. They automatically monitor your business’ other listings online and update your information when possible.

Are there any shortcuts?

If this sounds like too much work, or if you’re not comfortable doing it, why not hire a professional to manage your NAP information? At Above The Fold we have years of experience managing local SEO campaigns for clients throughout San Diego.  Contact us today for a free consultation.

The Seven Best Resources for Local SEO

As of November 2018, 60% of Americans used their phones or computers when searching for a local business. As this number continues to rise, it’s more important than ever to make sure your business has a strong web presence through digital marketing. To make it in today’s business world, when any potential clients make a local search, it is imperative to be at the top of the local listings.

Advertisers call this process search engine optimization (SEO). You may think that SEO tools are a daunting process to incorporate all ranking factors—something that only techies can do with their computer wizardry.

What if we told you that anyone can do SEO optimization and incorporate all local search ranking factors? Yes, even local business owners who don’t have any expertise on the internet. We’re about to show you seven ways to improve your business’ search rating and bring more customers through your doors.

Local SEO is more than Google

Google is the undisputed king of the internet and is involved in all ranking factors. In fact, 88% of Americans use Google for their internet searches, especially for a local search. That’s a huge number and it’s why nobody ever says “let me Yahoo that.”

For this reason, a lot of the advice we’re giving is centered around improving your Google rankings, which can be achieved with a local SEO strategy. That said, most of these guidelines apply to other search engines as well.

The best thing to do is to optimize your business listings for Google, then follow up with other search engines like Bing and Yahoo. By optimizing for 88% of searches, you’ll be setting yourself up to reach the highest number of customers.

Claim your business

The most important thing you can do to improve your local search ranking on the internet and on social media is to claim your business on search engines. This kind of marketing takes just a few minutes and will put you ahead of 56% of local businesses that haven’t even claimed their Google My Business (GMB) page.

What does this mean?

When you Google a business like “Electricians in San Diego,” you’ll notice that most of the businesses have their address, phone number and website listed. If you click on multiple results, you’ll notice that some of them have links that say “Suggest an Edit” and “Own this Business?”

If you click the link that says “Own this Business,” Google will need to verify your identity. Exactly how they do this has changed over the years, but it currently involves sending a postcard to your business’ physical address. The postcard contains a code, which you’ll have to enter into Google to complete the process.

Not claiming your business, will cause it to appear lower in search rankings, and will force you to rely on members of the public to keep your information up to date. Claiming your business allows you to keep your phone number, address and website up to date, as well a list your hours.

Do your keyword research

In SEO speak, keywords are the words that people use to look for a particular service. For example, if I’m an electrician in San Diego, how might people search for me? It’s not rocket science, just simple marketing.

They’d probably use terms like “electricians in San Diego,” “San Diego electrician” or “electrical work in San Diego.” So, how do you find out what keywords are popular for local businesses like yours?

Services like Moz and Ahrefs cost just a few dollars a month and will show you exactly what keywords people are using to find businesses that are similar to yours. By using these words in your site, you’ll increase the likelihood that these users will actually find you.

Provide useful information

Another way to improve your search ranking is to get people to stay on your site once they get there. In the early days of the internet, people would SEO optimize their websites by including blocks of text that are full of keywords. You’ve probably seen some of these sites. They look something like this:

Electricians San Diego, San Diego Electricians, Electrical workers San Diego, San Diego emergency Electrical repair, Electrical installers in San Diego, and so on for hundreds of similar keywords.

Needless to say, there’s nothing useful about this kind of keyword cramming. Since a search engine’s entire purpose is to provide useful information, they’ve started keeping track of how long people stay on a site once they’ve clicked on it. The theory is that people will stay longer if they actually find something of value.

For this reason, it’s a good idea to put a blog on your website or at least a few articles that are relevant to your business. Use relevant keywords in these articles, but make sure they sound natural. The overall goal here is to keep people from hitting their browser’s back button for as long as possible.

Make sure your mobile site works

With more and more people using their smartphones for internet searches, it’s no surprise that people appreciate a good mobile site. In fact, 61% of people who use their phones for searches won’t visit a business that doesn’t have a working mobile site.

Is this fair? No, it’s not. Unless you’re a web designer, building a mobile site probably isn’t part of your expertise. It certainly has nothing to do with how good your business.

But life isn’t fair, and we live in the age of the internet where people’s attention spans are shorter than ever. If you want to drive users to your business, you have to make it easy for them to learn about you. A good mobile site is essential for this.

Multiple landing pages for multiple locations

If your business has several locations throughout a region, creating multiple landing pages can help improve your local SEO ratings for each location. For example, if you own an electrical business with locations throughout the San Diego area, you might have several landing pages that look like this:

• Bestelectrician.com/San Diego
• Bestelectrician.com/La_Jolla
• Bestelectrician.com/La_Mesa

You can optimize each of these pages with keywords for those local areas, which will boost your search rankings.

Hire a professional

If all of this sounds too daunting, there are businesses that specialize in Local SEO optimization like our agency Above The Fold.  If you’re interested in what our team has to offer, contact us today to receive a free consultation.

Are you a business owner in San Diego who is confused by SEO? Look no further as we answer 10 of the most common questions.

1.    What does SEO stand for?

SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization. By engaging in SEO – that is, using keywords and phrases on your website, in your content and so on – you are attempting to push your website higher up the rankings. The ultimate goal is to usually get your website ranking on page 1 because most users rarely navigate beyond this page. This is known as SERPs or Search Engine Results Pages.

This is the organic way of growing your pages and website. In other words, you don’t pay for SEO itself – apart from the costs of creating content, employees, etc. Paying for adverts is not organic.

2.    Does SEO stay the same?

SEO is always changing. The way people search, what they search for and how they search has changed over the last few years and will continue to do so.

For example, many people are now using their smartphones as their main device for accessing the internet so it means your website has to be mobile-friendly.  It also means that Local SEO needs to be a big part of your marketing strategy to reach customers within a close proximity to your business.

Predictions are that more of us will be making voice searches in the future – in fact, by 2020 it is predicted half of us will be searching by voice – and that may mean a few changes to how your content needs to be formatted.

3.    How are keywords and SEO related?

Keywords are intrinsically linked. Keywords are the words and phrases your customers use to find products, services or brands they want.

For example, they may search for “seo company in San Diego” or “fair trade coffee shops San Diego”.  If you have these search terms and words in your content, it increases the likelihood of your website ranking higher in search engine results.

4.    How do I know which keywords work for my business?

Good question! You need to do something called keyword research. There are various ways you can do this – an agency specializing in SEO, social media and websites etc. can help you – or you can conduct keyword research yourself by using a keyword tool you find online.

Many of these tools are free to use. You will need to search based on the products you sell, what kind of business you are and so on. From these broad parent topics, you will narrow your search.

Some keywords are commonly used by customers looking for a business or products like yours so to rank higher with these, you may find that success is much more difficult.

5.    Where do I put SEO keywords?

There is a phrase ‘keyword stuffing’ and it implies that the frequency of keywords in ALL content is over the top, something that search engines algorithms no longer like.

Keywords and phrases need to be used naturally. They can be used across all your content, including web pages, meta titles, and meta descriptions just to name a few.

In terms of blog posts, whichever SEO term you have decided to optimize for, you would use it in the title of the post, in at least one H2 header (a sub-heading) and usually in the form of a question and in the first introductory paragraph.

6.    How many times should I use the keywords?

Using keywords and phrases should be ‘organic’, in other words, not shoe-horned onto the end of every sentence! There is no set formula, regardless of what some people say because big search engines like Google never reveal all the details behind their algorithms.

Keywords that naturally occur three to four times in an average length blog post – between 500 and 750 words – is usually ‘about right’.

7.    So I need to blog to improve SEO?

Blogging is a means of ranking higher in SERPs for certain keywords but again, this isn’t about loading a batch of blogs and hoping they work.

SEO is slightly more refined than this so any blogs need to be;

• Well-written
• Informative
• High-quality
• Consistently posted
• Shared via social media and other distribution channels

We recommend blog posts being around 1,000 words as a best practice.

8.    How does SEO connect with backlinks?

The internet is a complex web of content linking to other pieces of content.  This linking between websites help spread information and connect search engine spiders to the most relevant content.  In general, the more links a piece of content has pointing to it from external sources, the more value the search engine algorithm will give it.

And that means the website and the content will be pushed higher up the rankings. Backlinks are a vote of confidence that other users see your content and website as trustworthy.

9.    How do I build links?

At one time, companies would buy backlinks, something that is now a definite no-no!  What you need to do is have a backlinking strategy to build links naturally and in a way that complies with Google best practices. In other words, who would want to share your content and connect with it?

The better quality these websites are and the higher their Domain Authority, the more value these backlinks have to your overall SEO strategy.

10. Is SEO complicated?

SEO isn’t extremely complicated, but to push the authority of your domain up and improve your rankings, you need to have a multi-faced SEO strategy. In other words, strong and relevant keywords, plenty of high-quality content and a growing number of genuine backlinks to your website.

Keeping up with the changes can be difficult, especially when you have so many daily business tasks to complete. By outsourcing SEO, you could get much more.

Speak With Our Team Today

If you have questions about SEO for your small business, speak with our team of experts today.  We’d love to learn more about your business and offer a free consultation. Click here to get started today!