NAP - is lack of consistency in address elements an issue?
-
I've been looking at a local business in London and they have multi-sites, each with multiple versions of the same address in their NAP - they're using the correct addresses, with variations in terms of order of address elements (with some missing out London, and some including London)
For example, one listing puts the postcode after the city district - another before. Sometimes London is included in the address, though often not (the postal service doesn't include London in their "official version" of the addresses).
So the addresses are never wrong - it's just the elements in the address are mixed up a little, and some include London, and some do not.
Should I be concerned about this lack of address consistency, or should I try to exact match the various versions?
-
Sounds like a good plan, Luke! Good luck with the work, and be sure the calendar is crawlable
-
Hi Luke,
It's a complex topic. I think you'll find this Matt McGee article from SmallBusinessSEM and this one from Marcus Miller at Search Engine Land extremely helpful. Both talk about how to optimize multi-location businesses and very specifically about data consistency and does Google pay attention to slight variations like the one you described in your question where the addresses are never wrong, just "mixed up a little".
"... for the most part, the algo handles those minor discrepancies well. That being said, you don’t want to tempt fate."
-
Yes sorry it needed clarification - was struggling to describe the issue - what you suggest sounds like a good idea, indeed - I will put a complete NAP only at the top of each of the 8 main landing pages, in Schema, along with a calendar on each landing page linking to the class descriptions. Many thanks for your help with this - much appreciated
-
Ah, got it, Luke! Thanks for clarifying. It seems to me, then, that what you might need is some kind of a calendar on the main city landing page for each location that links to the different class descriptions. Would this be a way to format 38 different links so that customers can understand them easily and see what's available? Just a thought!
-
Hi Miriam - yes the 38 pages have been created about the services from each specific location (in this case health and fitness classes) - the classes are specific to that location, so each of the run of 38 pages are specific to a specific location, so there would a strong contextual relationship. Basically the 38 pages are specific to classes unique to that location (in terms of times, tutors and often type).
So I guess the whole idea of whether to do a specific footer for each locational section was what was humming around in my brain, with the specific address relevant to the content above, in the footer, rather than all 8 business locations consistently in the footer.
I was originally thinking of adding all 8 business addresses consistently in the footer, though I thought perhaps specific addresses may be more user friendly, and may even help Google understand the locational context.
-
Hi Luke,
Hmm ... that doesn't sound right to me. I may be missing something, but unless these 38 pages for each location have genuinely been created about the location and things relating specifically to it, I would not stick the NAP on there, just for the sake of putting it on a bunch of pages. What you're describing to me sounds like some kind of afterthought.
I also wouldn't change the footer around like that. It could create usability difficulties if it's changing throughout the site. Rather, my preference would be complete NAP only at the top of a single landing page per physical location, and NAP of all 8 businesses consistently in the sitewide footer. And, again, NAP of all 8 on the Contact page.This is what I consider to be the normal structure.
As for what to do with those several hundred pages, are they of really high quality? Are they city-specific or just generic to the business' topic? An example of city-specific might be something like a website for an arborist. He has a page for City A talking about how Dutch Elm Disease has hit that city. For City B, he has a page about birch tree borers that have affected that city's trees. So, from the main city A landing page, he could link to the Dutch Elm piece and for the main city B landing page, he could link to the birch borer page, as additional resources.
But if the content is just generic and you're trying to divvy it up between the cities, if there's not a strong contextual relationship, then there isn't really a good reason for doing so.
-
Hi Miriam,
What I meant is there are 8 business locations and the site's 300 odd pages are divided into these 8 (so each geographical location has around "38 pages" dedicated to that specific location and its services).
So what I was planning to do was simply put the correct location-specific NAP in the footer of each of the location-specific pages (so each run of location-specific "38 pages" will have the relevant [single] NAP in the footer of every page).
But my co-worker said only put the correct [single] NAP in the footer of the 8 location home(/landing) pages within the site, rather than on every page.
Hope that makes sense [it's been a long week ;-I]
-
(Miriam responding here, but signed into Mozzer Alliance right now)
Hi Luke,
If you mean in the footer and it's 10 or less locations, I'd say it's okay to put the NAP for the 8 businesses there, but not in the main body of the page.
My preferred method would be to put the complete NAP, in Schema, for Location A at the top of City Landing Page A, complete NAP for Location B at the top or City Landing Page B, etc. I would not suggest putting all of this NAP anywhere else on the site but the Contact Page.
-
Thanks Miriam - it sure does - their website is divided up by location, so I'm planning to put the relevant NAP at the bottom of every page through the website (8 locations and NAPs in total - 300 pages) - a colleague suggested just puting the NAP on each of the 8 location homepages though I suspect it would help more if the NAP was at foot of every page (so long as the correct NAP on the correct page ha!) - is that the right thing to do?
-
Hey Luke!
NAP consistency was judged to be the second most influential pack ranking factor on this year's Local Search Ranking Factors (https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors) so, yes, it's of major importance! Hope this helps.
-
When it comes to NAP, it should be as close to an exact match as you're able to achieve. Inconsistency in this area - while not the biggest detriment you can have - should be avoided.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Infinite scrolling issue?
Hi Guys, Reviewing this E-commerce page - https://tinyurl.com/ybjjwr65 Based on this Google article: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/02/infinite-scroll-search-friendly.html It mentions: Make sure that you or your content management system produces a paginated series (component pages) to go along with your infinite scroll. How would you check this, is there a tool to conduct this test? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kayl870 -
How Critical to Address Redirect Chains?
We have about 100 redirect chains and were not sure of the impact they are having on our SEO. One SEO expert wants to charge around $800 to clean these up for us. Any thoughts on how serious of an issue this is and how important it is to address?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | roundtable10 -
Same product in different categories and duplicate content issues
Hi,I have some questions related to duplicate content on e-commerce websites. 1)If a single product goes to multiple categories (eg. A black elegant dress could be listed in two categories like "black dresses" and "elegant dresses") is it considered duplicate content even if the product url is unique? e.g www.website.com/black-dresses/black-elegant-dress duplicated> same content from two different paths www.website.com/elegant-dresses/black-elegant-dress duplicated> same content from two different paths www.website.com/black-elegant-dress unique url > this is the way my products urls look like Does google perceive this as duplicated content? The path to the content is only one, so it shouldn't be seen as duplicated content, though the product is repeated in different categories.This is the most important concern I actually have. It is a small thing but if I set this wrong all website would be affected and thus penalised, so I need to know how I can handle it. 2- I am using wordpress + woocommerce. The website is built with categories and subcategories. When I create a product in the product page backend is it advisable to select just the lowest subcategory or is it better to select both main category and subcategory in which the product belongs? I usually select the subcategory alone. Looking forward to your reply and suggestions. thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cinzia091 -
IP Address location v Server Location Penguin 4/Possum
Hi All, Our hosting provider have their IP address range in Melbourne but offers servers in Sydney or Melbourne.. If we were to take a server in Sydney and an IP address from their Melbourne range (only IP range offered) will the new localisation updates to the Penguin/Possum Algorithms serve less up to our clients in Sydney thinking we are located in Melbourne? Sorry if im confusing.. I know I am 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CFCU1 -
Site Redesign Inconsistent Trailing Slash Issue
I'm looking at a site that has implemented trailing slashes inconsistently across multiple pages. For instance:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GrouchyKids
http://www.examplesite.co.uk/ (WITH)
http://www.examplesite.co.uk/product-range (WITHOUT)
http://www.examplesite.co.uk/product (WITHOUT)
http://www.examplesite.co.uk/blog/ (WITH)
http://www.examplesite.co.uk/blog/blog-article/ (WITH) The blog was created later in Wordpress which is one of the reasons why this issue exists. Looking at the inbound links unsurprisingly the lions share go to the home page but lots of other pages have links as well, particularly the product pages, no to many to the blog pages. This pattern is similar in terms of which pages rank, the home page ranks well for a variety of phrases, the product pages also do quite well. I know that ideally the URL's should be identical to the existing site, or if you have to you should 301 redirect old to new. The client wants to switch the whole site over to Wordpress which will be default implement a consistent URL structure across the board, thereby changing at least some of the URL's no matter what I do. I remember a Matt Cutts video that stated that even a 301 redirect will loose a clicks worth of link juice see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Filv4pP-1nw The existing site has a poor UX compared to the new proposed design so this should help us. Has anyone got any experience with a similar issue or any advice about how best to proceed?0 -
Understanding how to fix a 403 issue with my website
Hi guys, I hope you can help solve a mystery for me! My site FranceForFamilies.com has been around for 9 years and has always ranked well - at least until I launched a new Wordpress version earlier this year. The purpose of the relaunch was to improve the look of the site, so I kept the content and meta titles the same but created a new design. However, from the day of the new launch the search engine rankings have plummeted, to the point where most seem to have disappeared all together. I have found that when Moz crawls the site, it only crawls one page. I asked the Moz team about this and they said that the site is returning a 403. They also tested this using a curl and received a 406 response: curl -I www.franceforfamilies.com/ HTTP/1.1 406 Not Acceptable However, when I check our Google Webmaster tools I can't recreate the issue. I don't really know what is going on, and I don't have the technical knowledge to solve this - can you help? Thanks, Daniel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LeDanJohnson0 -
Issue: Rel Canonical
seomoz give me notices about rel canonical issues, how can i resolve it. any one can help me, what is rel canonical and how can i remove it
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | learningall0 -
Removing Duplicate Content Issues in an Ecommerce Store
Hi All OK i have an ecommerce store and there is a load of duplicate content which is pretty much the norm with ecommerce store setups e.g. this is my problem http://www.mystoreexample.com/product1.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ChriSEOcouk
http://www.mystoreexample.com/brandname/product1.html
http://www.mystoreexample.com/appliancetype/product1.html
http://www.mystoreexample.com/brandname/appliancetype/product1.html
http://www.mystoreexample.com/appliancetype/brandname/product1.html so all the above lead to the same product
I also want to keep the breadcrumb path to the product Here's my plan Add a canonical URL to the product page
e.g. http://www.mystoreexample.com/product1.html
This way i have a short product URL Noindex all duplicate pages but do follow the internal links so the pages are spidered What are the other options available and recommended? Does that make sense?
Is this what most people are doing to remove duplicate content pages? thanks 🙂0