010 — NAP Consistency & Local SEO
These are the simplest, most effective SEO “tactics” you could do today to improve the ranking of your website across all search engines.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Good Thursday morning. It is the first day of December, this 2022. And today I'm gonna talk a little bit about NAP consistency and in terms of how it can help you rank your cleaning company's website a bit higher in the search engines. So if you're struggling to stand out on the search engine map section, or even in the search engine results page in general, this, this is for you. So let's, this is gonna be the, the simplest, most effective thing you can do, uh, to, to have an impact right away and quickest even. Um, it's a great way to upgrade your visibility across maps, across the, uh, search engines, online business directories, and other social, uh, social bookmarking sites out there. Um, maintaining a consistent map. So a map is, uh, NAP is an acronym that stands for name, address, phone number, excuse me. And maintaining a consistent nap name, address, phone number across the internet is, is an absolute must for effective local search engine optimization, local seo.
(01:24)
You need to stay competitive in today's market, and, and you're gonna have to think of it as, uh, as the price that you have to pay, uh, to play in the game. Um, if you don't put yourself out there on the internet online, if you don't build your online presence, you're not gonna reap the rewards. But if you do decide to play the game, understand that, um, understand that you're not gonna be the only one doing it, and there are other people going to bat, um, and trying to swing just as hard as you are. So you've gotta compete with them as well. The good thing about local SEO is that if you're a, a local, uh, a residential cleaning company or a lawn care company, there aren't as many, uh, tech savvy digital marketers out there in your immediate area. If you're tar trying to target the entire country, all of the US or all of wherever you're listening from, it's gonna be a little more competitive.
(02:17)
But for your immediate local area there, the competition will not be as fierce. So if you just put a decent effort into it, you are going to stand out in ways that you didn't even, you didn't even know were possible. You will get leads from places you didn't even know existed. But keeping track of all where all of your business information is online is, uh, quite a tedious task. So you need your name, address, phone number, your company name, your company address, and your company phone number to be literally exactly the same in every single spot it is online. So, um,
Speaker 2 (02:58):
If you sometimes put the LLC in your name and sometimes don't, that hurts your, uh, consistency. That's an, that's, that's an, an inconsistency if you, uh, in your phone number, if you sometimes use the dashes or the parenthesis and sometimes do not, that is an inconsistency. Um, if you are, let's say, uh, John Smith Cleaning company, and sometimes you put John Smith Cleaning Company and sometimes you put John s cleaning company, that's an inconsistency. If your website is, uh, cleaning company.com, and sometimes you list it as www.cleaningcompany.cominsteadofjustcleaningcompany.com, that is an inconsistency. It must be absolutely identical down to the character, down to the comma, the period, the exclamation point, the question mark. Every single letter, even the capital letters, they all must be absolutely identical. It's critical for any business that wants to rank well in local organic search results to achieve this, this perfect nap consistency.
(04:18)
You get the perfect nap by going to each and every website your business is listed on, and creating an account, changing the listing. Sometimes they already have 'em created, so you just gotta go on there and claim them, make sure everything is set up exactly the same. Figure out first how you're going to list all of this. If you've already got it on your website and you already want to use that format, write it down, put it in a spreadsheet, put it on a Google Doc, save it somewhere so you can refer to it every single time you go to create an account or go to update an account profile directory listing. Wherever you are online, you must have these identical. Of course, this will take quite a while, and there are some local, uh, SEO companies that offer this as a paid service. Uh, there are some softwares that do this, uh, such as Yext.
(05:12)
Um, they, uh, offer their, their best plan is I think, about a thousand dollars a year. And, uh, you do have to sign up for an annual contract if you want that same plan, um, except you don't want the annual contract and you want it a little bit cheaper, you can reach out to us. Reach out to me here. Hi, virtually.io. Hi, virtually.io. Um, reach out, let us know that you heard it on this podcast episode or this video. Uh, we have special, we save quite a bit for, for our customers if they just, if they buy the same product through us. Uh, it is just an exclusive, exclusive partnership we have with Yext. So if you're thinking about taking the plunge anyway, go
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Ahead. You, you can come through us and get all the same that you would, you just save a few bucks every month. Um, so if you're going, uh, onto working towards correcting, uh, your nap, making sure you have a perfect nap consistency, you need your company's full name, the full address, the phone number, and the website. Uh, when your nap is consistent, when it's perfectly consistent, the same information will show up on all the profiles and in all those directories. And this will help the search engine, and they will understand who you are and what you're about, what you do, and how people can find you and reach out to you. Right? So once the, once the algorithm understands all of that, they, they start to trust you a little bit more. And you don't ever want to go down the path of distrust with an algorithm because, because it's not like they're gonna forget.
(06:50)
They won't forget. An algorithm doesn't forget. Um, it's, it's a machine that is, that was built, it was designed specifically to learn and make better decisions. So if it learned at any point that your website or your nap was distrust dis not trustworthy, distrustful, I don't know if that's a word, if it was ever untrustworthy, they're gonna remember that and they'll never give you the advantage over someone else in the future. Um, common reasons for an inconsistent map are things like changing your business address and you're not updating, uh, previously built citations. You move locations, maybe you've added a location, even, uh, changing these and Yelp, yellow Pages, Facebook, Google, uh, Google Business Profile, all these things having a different store address than the company registered address, but you're using both online is another reason for an in inconsistent nap. Pick one address for that location and stick to it.
(07:51)
Then another reason for an inconsistent nap is generating different phone numbers for attribution tracking purposes. Um, this one, I will, this is a different, this is a personal opinion on my own. I think having a, having different phone numbers out there is okay, um, especially with local seo, because I haven't, I I, we, we've been able to get to the number one position by using different numbers for attribution tracking purposes. Um, but I do notice that once we have to start kind of getting our act together, we do have to start, we have to make those all consistent. So it is, it is pretty, it does make a difference, but I like to see where our leads, where our highest converting leads are coming from so we can double down on those. That honestly is, is a, is a more, is a better opportunity cost for me. I'm able to take that hit and in, in the hopes of, um, generating more business.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
Um, the benefits of a consistent nap. Um, again, search engines are going to trust you, uh, a lot more. You're gonna gain precedence over your competitors, maintaining a high level of consistency. And this accuracy will reduce the risk. Uh, it'll reduce the risk of mistakes being made by search engines. Like, uh, by the way, they mechanically process the data. Um, they're just machines. They, they don't reason like a human brain does. So if it's different, they're gonna think it's a completely different. If they're the same, it'll count it as the same. Um, and when users, uh, another benefit of a consistent nap. So you're gonna rank rank higher. And so when users are performing their first searches, uh, as part of the business journey, um, this is your first opportunity to make an impression. Uh, and, and with this is your best opportunity to ultimately get them to convert, become a client.
(09:53)
That's the whole goal of it all. All because we're able to influence the user journey, uh, and because of a consistent map. Um, doing this at the, the search intense stage of the process is most influential because when they go to, when they're, they're hopping online to search specifically, they're, they're looking to solve that process or process looking to solve that problem right here and now, they're not looking to, uh, keep scrolling like on Facebook with interruption marketing. They're just scrolling through. They're not necessarily looking to solve that problem right now. So there's a bit more work into getting them into that, uh, emotion into that state of mind. But when they go to search and you show up there, they're gonna remember the, the, the companies that were there, um, in the beginning. Uh, so if you're able to influence that part of the buyer journey, all the more power to you.
(10:43)
If you need any help with your NAP consistency, if you're unsure about, um, how to check your NAP consistency, you can go ahead and Google your business name, website, your company name, phone numbers, addresses, make, and see if you have multiple out there. If you do and you need multiple for multiple locations, make sure they're all the same. Just get them organized. Um, if you don't wanna do it all, uh, manually yourself, we do have that the tool. It is Yext, uh, that can do it all for you. Uh, and really a matter of seconds, you just enter in your business information, click a button, and it, it does it through its API access, uh, with all their partners. So really awesome tool. Uh, if you have any questions, again, reach out, you know where the links are, you have our email addresses, it is somewhere on this profile. We thank you for listening. Thank you for, uh, taking this time out of your day to learn a little bit more about how, uh, a consistent nap can help further your business and get you to where you wanna go. We'll talk to you soon. Bye bye.
