There are many aspects that help drive a company up the search listings and onto the front page of Google. Marketers often become obsessed with content when trying to achieve a high place in the rankings. Yet, while content such as reviews and news citations can’t, on the whole, be controlled, there are other factors that can be controlled – factors that marketers at times neglect. Let’s call these, the ‘contrallables’.

One of the much overlooked ‘controllables’ that industry professionals tend to ignore is the name, address and phone number of a business (NAP) and the consistency of how these are written across the website and other online properties. It’s straightforward enough to fix, and taking care of this certainly has an impact on where a company ranks. It’s high time marketers made more strides towards looking after NAP, so with that in mind, here are a few quick tips for making sure a company’s NAP is consistent and effective in driving brilliant SEO.

  • When it comes to the name of a company, it’s beneficial to include a keyword in the name that relates to the industry you’re in. So, if you work in the legal profession, including law, solicitor or legal in the company’s title can help to make it stand out in a search. Of course, giving a company a unique title can help to differentiate it from competitors, but when it comes to SEO, it’s advantageous for the name to have some element of practicality.

  • In order to authenticate businesses as genuine, search engines examine a variety of intelligence from across the Internet, meaning consistency is critical. With addresses, make sure that across all webpages they’re written correctly. Don’t have ‘road’ in one place then ‘rd’ in another, as it can have an undesired effect on results. If you move and the old location is still linked to the company, go to Google My Business listing to attempt to correct this.
     
  • Don’t overlook the telephone number; people still like to call a business to convey complicated queries or questions over sending an email or a tweet. When it comes to SEO though, acquiring a local number can help to push a business up the local search rankings, so it’s an advantage to have one if you want to have a local appeal. It’s also good practice for phone numbers displayed on the Internet to be formatted properly for mobile devices so people can easily tap or click them to call a business. It can be frustrating having to memorise and type, or copy and paste a number into a phone, especially when on the go. This won’t necessarily help with your SEO but it might just lead to higher call volumes.

There are many tips and tricks to follow in order to achieve great search result listings, however, with the ever changing nature of some aspects of SEO, it can be hard to predict, and at times it can seem like a mystic art. With NAP though you have something that is fairly simple to get to grips with and can make a difference. A consistent, proper NAP of course won’t win you the full goal, but it will definitely help a company to optimise its search engine results.

 

By Craig Busst, Managing Director of City Numbers. 

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