Nitpicky NAPS Local Question
-
I'm about to setup all our NAPS for our Tampa office with Moz Local, and I'm curious about one small thing: suite vs ste? I have read that what matters most is consistency, but since I haven't set it up yet, if anyone had any experience with full names being written out doing better/worse than abbreviations?
Thanks,
Ruben
-
Hi Ruben,
I hope you'll just love Moz Local!Yep, it looks like that # thing is everywhere. When, exactly, this happened, I did not notice.
-
Miriam!
Funny you mentioned that last part. When deciding what to do earlier, I did a search and saw the same thing. Of all the local results, only one had suite in them. The others all had the # instead, so I figured I would just change everything to match that.
Thanks everyone!
Ruben
P.S. Excited to get start with Moz Local!
-
Hi Ruben,
Suite vs. Ste. does not matter. Nor does Ave. vs. Avenue, St. vs Street, etc. What needs to be consistent is the numbers and spelling of your street address, but abbreviations like the above do not matter.
Interestingly, it just came to my attention this morning that Google appears to have made a recent change in how they are displaying second line data. Instead of suite or unit, everything seems to have been replaced by the # sign. Go do some searches and see if you see this, too. A little change!
-
Thanks for the response. One quick follow-up, when you said you "would write your address as completely as possible" are you talking about writing out the standard abbreviations, (blvd, st, e, w) as well, or just the ones that aren't super common like "ste" in this case?
I really appreciate the insight and your time.
Thanks again,
Ruben
-
There's a couple of things at play here. First off, there's a principle I hold which is "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right". Now abbreviations aren't wrong but they're inferior to the full word. So even if there's no penalty for doing so, I would write it all out. You're talking 2 more letters to remove any ambiguity in this case. I would write your address as completely as possible.
Second is that Google is likely to normalize the address anyways. I've noticed more and more places that do that. There's a growing number of APIs that can do that for you as well. If Google isn't normalizing them now, expect it to happen in the future.
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
-
What the best way is to find keywords for my local website
I'm wondering if there are any high keywords I might be missing out on and so I'm wondering what the best way to find keywords for my local niche and also if there's a way to find out who is currently performing best for those local keywords? Thanks
Local Listings | | michaelmouse2 -
META Descriptions and NAPs
Does the meta description/snippet need to match the NAP for that office? If it doesn't, will it hurt local results/cause inconsistencies? The reason I am asking is that we are using one line for one of our offices to answer texts. But, our other offices have their own distinct numbers. So, if we want people to text us and advertise it through the meta description/snippet, can we just use that one number for all the offices? Or, do we need to purchase additional lines? Thanks, Ruben
Local Listings | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Phone number inconsistencies - local search
Hi, Can you help me with something that is probably straightforward? A website which displays a different phone number to visitors to the one in the source code is using this for tracking purposes I assume? Since the phone number in the source code matches with the local citations I am assuming that there is no harm here in terms of local ranking? Thanks
Local Listings | | AL123al0 -
Never Removed My Local Listings?
Hi Local SEO experts, A while back we created Google My Business listings for a few of our company locations. A couple of months ago we removed them, because we realized that G might not consider them company locations as they weren't constantly staffed. Only problem is that they started showing up again. Truthfully I don't mind, but I just want to make sure the business won't get penalized for it. They say "claim this business" on the local listing because it's not claimed by us anymore. Is this okay or can we get in trouble for it? If it's not okay, how do I go about removing them if I don't have access to it? Thanks for your time, Rachel
Local Listings | | Rachel_J0 -
Address Format for Local SEO
Hi, Ive been reading how important it is to get the address of a business consistent and written in the right format to help with Local Search Engine Rankings. Is this correct? If this is the case, are there any online generators to help create this html in the right format to put into a webpage. Thank you.
Local Listings | | Ampweb0 -
Local Subdomain vs. Local Subfolder
I know this is an issue that's been discussed here ad nauseum but I have, possibly, an interesting case. A third party company created our local search pages, and they perform very highly in SERPs, but are subdomains (local.website.com). But my problem comes down to two things, one of which isn't necessarily a subdomain vs. subfolder issue. 1.a. With the subdomain local.website.com we rank much higher for local search than we do for regular search on our main domain and it's respective keywords, would changing these subdomains to subfolders keep the link juice that the subdomain currently possesses and actually help our website rankings? b. And what strikes me as the most puzzling is that on local.website.com ALL of the content is identical (I can thank Copyscape for that) to the other local search pages on our own site and various other sites in our industry. I know the duplicate content is hurting our domain, which makes it even more confusing that our subdomain is ranking so highly for things like "diamonds by the yard florida". 2. We're an online only company, and I feel as though gaming the local search function isn't exactly something we should be doing, both from an ethical and an SEO standpoint. Is there any evidence that abusing the local search functions can have a negative affect on a domain's rankings? Hopefully this makes sense, if anyone needs clarification please let me know and I'll endlessly clarify. Thanks,
Local Listings | | allurez0 -
Local SEO: Creating a Second home-based business?
I'm in a bit of a pickle, here's the issue: I have a home-based business with a physical address. I plan on starting another home-based business at the same physical address. I only have one phone (cellphone). I plan on operating both businesses unless one completely eclipses the other. I can probably see your head spinning right now . . . how big of NAP issues are we looking at? I own my house, I could probably add a line to the new business address (like a suite # or something) I can afford a landline or secondary cellphone if necessary Any thoughts, ideas, criticisms, direction, hate-mail, or solutions?
Local Listings | | roachdesign0 -
Unable to verify my google local listing page by phone verification.
Hi, I have created the Google local listing page for my business site. I want to verify it using the phone verification but there is only a option - "verify by postcard". Is there no option to verify it using a phone number? Help needed.
Local Listings | | SangeetaC0