NAP Questions
-
Hello Moz Community,
I recently found out that one of my client's actual business name on paper has spacing and does not have that many capitalized words (ex. BlahBlahCity is the current NAP, however on paper it's actually Blahblah City). After readying the guidelines for representing your business on Google I started to worry that this may be holding us back from ranking in the local 3 pack.
Here's the blurb from the guideline:
Fully capitalized words (with the exception of acronyms) or unnecessary spaces.
- Not acceptable: "SUBWAY"
- Acceptable: "Subway", "KFC", "IHOP", "JCPenney"
Is this a big issue or can I leave it as is?
Another issue that I believe is holding us back was the google my business name he has for his multiple locations. His 2 locations have the city next to the business name.
example:
- BlahBlahCity City#1
- BlahBlahCity City#2
I know here I do need to remove the city from the business name, however when it comes to citations can google tell that it is 2 different locations and not think it's duplicate?
-
Hey Gannon,
Good questions! Quick answers:
-
Yes, you should be using the business name exactly as it appears in the real world. So, no extra capitals.
-
Think about a huge chain like Whole Foods. Google has no problem understanding that Whole Foods located in Dallas is not Whole Foods located in Boston. As Dmitri has said, it's your address/phone that separate the businesses. So, do be sure the phone numbers are separate. Additionally, be sure you have a separate page on the website for each branch and be sure that all other citations are consistently pointing to the respective landing page for the correct location instead of to the homepage or some other page on the site. With this strategy, your client should be just fine.
-
-
Hi,
I'm not sure about how much capitalization differences effect your rankings, however I do know that Google likes consistency a lot. So, I say follow Google guidelines, it surely won't hurt.
About Google understanding the locations of branches of the company - that's quite easy. Do those locations have their own contact us/address information pages? Do those locations have their own Google plus pages? If so, then don't worry, it won't be duplicate. However make sure that you don't have exact duplicate websites for two different locations.
Hope this helps.
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
-
Google My Business Question
I work for a large organization with a number of locations. There is a Google My Business listing for us, under our umbrella name, that lists an old address (building we no longer occupy) and says that we are "permanently closed". I believe this is an unverified listing because there is an "own this listing?" link in it. In order to take control of the listing, Google gives us three options: call, text or snail mail. The number is an automated line so calling and texting aren't going to work and snail mail wouldn't work b/c we're no longer in the building. Anyone know how we can take control of this listing so that it doesn't look like we're "permanently closed?"
Local Listings | | yaelslater0 -
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 -
NAP question and Google local.
Hello, My client has successfully grown one of their event venues locally (lets call it venue A) and on the back of that bought two more venues (B & C). Then created an umbrella company to manage all three. He now wants to market the umbrella company and so redirected the original successful venue domain (A) to the new umbrella company domain. The umbrella company is located at the same address as the original venue A. So it shares the same address, phone number, website as venue A but a different name. All this done before me. He has a Google local page for the original venue - venue A- and changed the domain on it to the new one. He also has Google local pages for the other two venue locations. But doesn't have a Google local page for the umbrella company. Now he finds rankings are down. Looking around I can see that his citations are all based on the original successful venue name A - but he has changed the website URL on many of the citations to the new domain.So a bit of a mess as we have a mixture of addresses, same phone number for all 4 , different business names for all 4, same website for all 4. If all the venues plus the umbrella company are in the same city, but have different names and addresses but the same phone number (for bookings) and web address, are they allowed a Google local page each? I suggest just having a Google local page for the umbrella company and remove the others as they are not actually separate businesses although they do have different addresses. But unsure if this is correct or necessary. Not sure how to progress with this one and any help appreciated?
Local Listings | | AL123al0 -
Individual practitioner NAP - unique "N", repeated "AP" Help!
We have a business where we have a number of doctor's offices, and at each office there are a few individual doctors. Customers often search for either the overarching brand or the specific doctors. Our hope is to optimize our listings so that we can rank in local SEO for both the brand name and doctor names. We have set up our local listings in Google My Business for all of the offices (common brand name, unique address, unique phone, unique landing page), but would like to explore adding individual doctor names in the listings too. The challenge is that each doctor within an office shares the address and phone number. They do have unique names (obviously) and landing pages, although the doctor landing pages don't have any specific contact information on them. My understanding is that we should have unique phone numbers for each listing. Unfortunately, this is a management and IT maintenance challenge. My question is - if we didn't use a unique phone number and instead used both the same address and phone number across multiple listings (office and doctors practicing there), are we violating Google's guidelines / damaging our overall rankings for all the listings? Does anyone have a sense of how bad this might be, so we can understand the risk/benefit? And secondly, would we make things worse by adding the non-unique address/phone to the individual doctor pages? Would this just reinforce inconsistent NAP, right on our site? Thanks!
Local Listings | | OneMedical0 -
Local Link Building Question: High DA Chambers vs Low PA Trade Groups
Hi all, We've been researching relevant, real organizations in our area that allow members to link their websites from the directory. I've basically got two buckets of prospects: Chambers of commerce type sites with more authority (DA ~40+) but less relevance to our niche (injury law) Bar associations with less authority (DA ~20) but super relevant. Assuming that they cost the same and covered the same geographic area, which links would you go after if you had to choose one or the other? Thanks in advance.
Local Listings | | LeeAbrahamson0 -
Default Local SEO question: Does Google really do improptu check ins?
I have a client who has multiple locations within his state, many of which are satellite offices. Although they don't have anyone working at these satellite offices full time, they have office space available to them their, someone who can take calls/mail and do use the space frequently in person. We've been in the process of cleaning up duplicate and incorrect listings in directories to get on the map in the SERPs in these markets, but the local SEO outfit we've hired has come back with a problem I found surprising. In order to clean up the duplicate & incorrect Google+ profiles that we've got out there for these offices, we evidently need to work with an actual Google moderator. This moderator has said that the satellite offices in question are actually not real business locations and are in violation of G+ guidlines. The local SEO I'm using says that it's not uncommon for Google to actually send someone out to do an in person improptu visit when they are suspicious that a listing might not belong in their listings, and I find this really surprising. Do any of you have any experience with whether this is the case? FWIW, this is a real business that could have someone working remotely in these offices remotely if that's what it took to make Google happy, but they'd rather not and certainly don't need to in order to offer their services in these markets.
Local Listings | | LeeAbrahamson0 -
Is this a NAP inconsistency or is it fine?
All my citations are built with this zip code: 34655, but Bing Places wants me to add the +4 to it. 34655-4700. Will this cause a problem for inconsistency? I can override it and just use "34655," but I'm not sure if Bing would considered that some sort of error and penalize my listing for it. Any thoughts? Thanks! Ruben
Local Listings | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
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
Local Listings | | KempRugeLawGroup0