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
-
Domain Change Of Address & Sale
Hi Moz community Let's say I have two domains www.domain1.com www.domain2.com domain1 is my main website. Domain 2 was a peripheral side project I was working on. I recently decided to shut it down. So I hooked up the proper 301s and filed a change of address request with Google Webmaster tools. I have had an offer for someone to purchase domain2 - I have absolutely no use for it and would like to sell it. I just want first to figure out that: I can do this without losing any ranking to my main site. I can disassociate this domain from myself and my Company completely. I don't want any of the work we put into it to transfer to the new owner. How can I do this? thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shop-Sq0 -
Mobile Canonical Tag Issue
Hey so, For our site
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ggpaul562
we have the desktop version: www.site.com/product-name/product-code/ The mobile version www.site.com/mobile/product-name/product-code So...on the desktop version we'd have the following.. | | Now my question is, what do we do as far as canonicals on the actual mobile URL? Would it be this? | |
| | OR are we NOT supposed to have mobile canonical tags whatsoever since we've already added "rel alternate" ? Would like some clarificaiton. | | |0 -
University website outbound links issue
Hi - I'm working on a university website and have found a load of (1) outbound links to companies that have commercial tie ups to the university and, beyond that, loads of (2) outbound links to companies set up by alumni and (3) outbound links to commercial clients of the university. Your opinions on whether I should nofollow these, or not, would be welcome. At the moment I'm tempted to nofollow (1) yet leave (2) and (3) - quite simply because the (1) backlinks may have been negotiated as part of a package (nobody can actually remember at the university!), yet (2) and (3) were freely given by the university. Your thoughts would be welcome!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Wordpress to HubSpot CMS - I had major crawl issues post launch and now traffic is down 400%
Hi there good looking person! Our traffic went from 12k visitors in july to 3k visitors in july. << www.thedsmgroup.com >>When we moved our site from wordpress to the hubspot COS (their CMS system), I didnt submit a new sitemap to google webmaster tools. I didn't know that I had to... and to be honest, I've never submitted or re-submitted a sitemap to GWT. I have always built clean sites with fresh content and good internal linking and never worried about it. Yoast kind of took care of the rest, as all of my sites and our clients' sites were always on wordpress. Well, lesson learned. I got this message on June 27th in GWT_http://www.thedsmgroup.com/: Increase in not found errors__Google detected a significant increase in the number of URLs that return a 404 (Page Not Found) error. Investigating these errors and fixing them where appropriate ensures that Google can successfully crawl your site's pages._One month after our site launched we had 1,000 404s on our website. Ouch. Google thought we had a 1,200 page website with only 200 good pages and 1,000 error pages. Not very trust worthy... We never had a 404 ever before this, as we added a plugin to wordpress that would 301 any 404 to the homepage, so we never had a broken link on our site, which is not ideal for UX, but as far as google was concerned, our site was always clean. Obviously I have submitted a new sitemap to GWT a few weeks ago, and we are moving in the right direction... **but have I taken care of everything I need to? I'm not sure. Our traffic is still around 100 visitors per day, not 400 per day as it was before we launched the new site.**Thoughts?I'm not totally freaking out or anything, but a month ago we ranked #1 and #2 for "marketing agency nj", now we aren't in the top 100. I've never had a problem like this. _I added a few screen grabs from Google Webmaster Tools that should be helpful.__Bottom line, have I done everything I need to or do I need to do something with all of these "not found" error details that I have in GWT?_None of these "not found" pages have any value and I'm not sure how Google even found them... For example: http://www.thedsmgroup.com/supersize-page-test/screen-shot-2012-11-06-at-2-33-22-pmHelp! -JasonuhLLtou&h4QmGCW#0 uhLLtou&h4QmGCW#1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Charlene-Wingfield0 -
Severe health issues are found on your site. - Check site health (GWT)
Hi, We run a Magento website - When i log in to Google Webmaster Tools, I am getting this message: Severe health issues are found on your site. - <a class="GNHMM2RBFH">Check site health
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs2010
</a>Is robots.txt blocking important pages? Some important page is blocked by robots.txt. Now, this is the weird part - the page being blocked is the admin page of magento - under
www.domain.com/index.php/admin/etc..... Now, this message just wont go away - its been there for days now - so why does Google think this is an "important page"? It doesnt normally complain if you block other parts of the site ?? Any ideas? THanks0 -
Ecombuffet.com are offering a Rescue Review focused on Panda - Penguin and identifying issues. Has anyone used this service or aware of the organisation in general?
http://www.ecombuffet.com/rescue-review.htm . I have 2 sites that have definitely been hit by penguin and getting worse so am thinking of paying for this service as nothing I do seems to stop the slide (more like a plummet). Any comments welcome.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shaann1 -
Is white text on a white background an issue when...?
Hi guys, This question was loosely answered here (http://www.seomoz.org/q/will-google-index-a-site-with-white-text-will-it-give-it-bad-ratings), but I wanted to elaborate on the concern. The issue I have is this, http://www.searchenginexperts.com.au/preview/white-text-white-background-issue Of the four div elements on the page, which; is best practice for SEO? and which of them would not be penalized by google on the grounds of hidden text? The reason I ask is that I have a site that is currently implementing the first div styling, but if you either remove the image OR uncheck the repeat-x (in inspect element) the text is left as white on white. I have added the transparent image on green to prove that having a background colour to back up the tiled image is not always going to work. What can be done in this scenario? Thanks in advance, Dan (From my managers account)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RuchirP0 -
Linking to local pages on main page - keyword self-cannibalization issue?
Hi guys, Our website has this landing page: www.example.com/service1/ Is this considered keyword self-cannibalization if on the above page we link to local pages such as: www.example.com/service1-in-chicago/ www.example.com/service1-in-newyork/ www.example.com/service1-in-texas/ Many thanks David
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sssrpm0