NAP - effect of adding a word to the name of businesss
-
Hello,
I'm faced with a decision which requires some feedback from experts like you.
My client has a business which has inconsistent citation submissions out the ying yang. For examples sake their business is called "brand all types body repair", where "brand" is the parent company who owns my client's company, and "all types body repair" is my client's company.
In most of their existing citations the phone number and address are all consistent, but some citations contain the name "brand all types body repair", and others just "all types body repair".
The name used on their website's NAP is "all types body repair"; however the name used on the larger directories like the BBB and yellow pages is "brand all types body repair". Also since they are registered in the BBB as this, "brand all types body repair" is their legal business name.
Since they are registered in the BBB as "brand all types body repair" my thoughts are to ensure every citation uses this as the name.
Three questions come out of this:
-
I'm not really changing the name, only adding a brand word in front of the existing name. Will this have less of an effect than changing the name completely?
-
If I change the name on their website from "all types body repair" to "brand all types body repair", will that have a negative affect on search rankings if some of the citations are already using "brand all types body repair"?
-
What would you do about the name issue?
-
-
Hi Steve,
So glad my reply was helpful. Good for you for getting the NAP into compliance. You've done your client a major service.
-
Hey Miriam,
Thanks for the response!
I ended up correcting all the business directories to the legal name and yes my rankings did drop; however they seem to have levelled out and now hopefully they will start increasing again.
-
Hi Steve,
You need to go with whatever the legal business name or DBA is and then correct all citations to match this. It can be a lot of work, but considering that the recent David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors 2013 lists consistency of structured citations as the #3 ranking factor, this is about as important as anything can be!
You may need to re-verify some listings (particularly the Google+ Local listing) with the naming change, and yes, there may be a bit of a drop, but if you can get all citations into compliance, it should be uphill from there. I'd look at it this way: right now, the business is in a negative situation with citation inconsistency issues that, if fixed, could yield better future results for them.
Good luck with the work ahead!
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
-
On 1 of our sites we have our Company name in the H1 on our other site we have the page title in our H1 - does anyone have any advise about the best information to have in the H1, H2 and Page Tile
We have 2 sites that have been set up slightly differently. On 1 site we have the Company name in the H1 and the product name in the page title and H2. On the other site we have the Product name in the H1 and no H2. Does anyone have any advise about the best information to have in the H1 and H2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CostumeD0 -
Base copy on 1 page, then adding a bit more for another page - potential duplicate content. What to do?
Hi all, We're creating a section for a client that is based on road trips - for example, New York to Toronto. We have a 3 day trip, a 5 day trip, a 7 day trip and a 10 day trip. The 3 day trip is the base, and then for the 5 day trip, we add another couple of stops, for the 7 day trip, we add a couple more stops and then for the 10 day trip, there might be two or three times the number of stops of the initial 3 day trip. However, the base content is similar - you start at New York, you finish in Toronto, you likely go through Niagara on all trips. It's not exact duplicate content, but it's similar content. I'm not sure how to look after it? The thoughts we have are:1) Use canonical tags 3,5,7 day trips to the 10 day trip.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digitalhothouse
2) It's not exactly duplicate content, so just go with the content as it is We don't want to get hit by any penalty for duplicate content so just want to work out what you guys think is the best way to go about this. Thanks in advance!0 -
Google now automatically adding (NAME).UK.COM to the end of each page title
We're on a .uk.com subdomain (scientifica.uk.com). Now, at the end of each page title, Google is automatically adding 'Scientifica - UK.COM'. So a lot of our results now appear as [Page title] - Scientifica - UK.COM It looks a bit a mess and I'm worried about our CTR. Can anyone shed some light on this or know how to stop it? Thank you WbCO0BM
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamesPearce0 -
What has a better chance of ranking alongside my main site for my company name, a subdomain or new domain?
Hi Moz, Do search engines really treat subdomains as separate domains in this regard? Or are we more likely to get more real estate on the first page with a new domain? Our goal is to have our main site and this new subdomain or domain ranking in positions 1 and 2 for our company name. This is going to be a careers site/portal. Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Accidently added a nofollow, noindex tag and then...
Hey guys, My first post here and ironically highlights a ridiculously stupid mistake! Ok, here's the deal... I started building links to one of my new page on a fairly good, old site (DA = >35). Before starting to build links, I added fresh new content, and while doing that, I accidentally added a "nofollow" and "noindex" tag to the page! Guess what, google DID de-index the page ! So the questions is (and YES, I did change the meta tags): Will google re-index the page with some good linking? Will it treat the page as a new, fresh page even though it was present for over a year? I had already started link building to that page, and now technically the links are pointing to a page that does not exist in the index, so once it does get re-indexed, will Google FLAG it as having too many links? Would I be ranking it as a new page? Will its previous ranking (for very few keywords) will come back? Thanks and Regards, Amod
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bonusjonathan0 -
Exact match domain names
Hello, Someone approached a client of mine to sell a exact match domain name for a very competitive and high converting keyword. Would this be of any use and what are the best tactics to employ if it is purchased? I was of the opinion that the 'power' of exact match domain names are dying fast but would be interested to hear what people with experience in this think and what they have done with them (i.e. set-up a website on that domain or re-directed it)? Thanks, Rikki
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RikkiD220 -
Value in purchasing domain name for targeted search term?
Is there any value in purchasing a domain name for a search term we want to target? If there is, would it be better to have it forward directly to our site, or create a landing page that would then link to our site and our products?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FutureMemoriesInc0 -
Effects on SEO with CDN
Should we be concerned about any adverse consequences to our site's SEO value when moving the site's assets (javascript files and css files) to a CDN (Akamai)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Volusion.com0