NAP - is lack of consistency in address elements an issue?
-
I've been looking at a local business in London and they have multi-sites, each with multiple versions of the same address in their NAP - they're using the correct addresses, with variations in terms of order of address elements (with some missing out London, and some including London)
For example, one listing puts the postcode after the city district - another before. Sometimes London is included in the address, though often not (the postal service doesn't include London in their "official version" of the addresses).
So the addresses are never wrong - it's just the elements in the address are mixed up a little, and some include London, and some do not.
Should I be concerned about this lack of address consistency, or should I try to exact match the various versions?
-
Sounds like a good plan, Luke! Good luck with the work, and be sure the calendar is crawlable
-
Hi Luke,
It's a complex topic. I think you'll find this Matt McGee article from SmallBusinessSEM and this one from Marcus Miller at Search Engine Land extremely helpful. Both talk about how to optimize multi-location businesses and very specifically about data consistency and does Google pay attention to slight variations like the one you described in your question where the addresses are never wrong, just "mixed up a little".
"... for the most part, the algo handles those minor discrepancies well. That being said, you don’t want to tempt fate."
-
Yes sorry it needed clarification - was struggling to describe the issue - what you suggest sounds like a good idea, indeed - I will put a complete NAP only at the top of each of the 8 main landing pages, in Schema, along with a calendar on each landing page linking to the class descriptions. Many thanks for your help with this - much appreciated
-
Ah, got it, Luke! Thanks for clarifying. It seems to me, then, that what you might need is some kind of a calendar on the main city landing page for each location that links to the different class descriptions. Would this be a way to format 38 different links so that customers can understand them easily and see what's available? Just a thought!
-
Hi Miriam - yes the 38 pages have been created about the services from each specific location (in this case health and fitness classes) - the classes are specific to that location, so each of the run of 38 pages are specific to a specific location, so there would a strong contextual relationship. Basically the 38 pages are specific to classes unique to that location (in terms of times, tutors and often type).
So I guess the whole idea of whether to do a specific footer for each locational section was what was humming around in my brain, with the specific address relevant to the content above, in the footer, rather than all 8 business locations consistently in the footer.
I was originally thinking of adding all 8 business addresses consistently in the footer, though I thought perhaps specific addresses may be more user friendly, and may even help Google understand the locational context.
-
Hi Luke,
Hmm ... that doesn't sound right to me. I may be missing something, but unless these 38 pages for each location have genuinely been created about the location and things relating specifically to it, I would not stick the NAP on there, just for the sake of putting it on a bunch of pages. What you're describing to me sounds like some kind of afterthought.
I also wouldn't change the footer around like that. It could create usability difficulties if it's changing throughout the site. Rather, my preference would be complete NAP only at the top of a single landing page per physical location, and NAP of all 8 businesses consistently in the sitewide footer. And, again, NAP of all 8 on the Contact page.This is what I consider to be the normal structure.
As for what to do with those several hundred pages, are they of really high quality? Are they city-specific or just generic to the business' topic? An example of city-specific might be something like a website for an arborist. He has a page for City A talking about how Dutch Elm Disease has hit that city. For City B, he has a page about birch tree borers that have affected that city's trees. So, from the main city A landing page, he could link to the Dutch Elm piece and for the main city B landing page, he could link to the birch borer page, as additional resources.
But if the content is just generic and you're trying to divvy it up between the cities, if there's not a strong contextual relationship, then there isn't really a good reason for doing so.
-
Hi Miriam,
What I meant is there are 8 business locations and the site's 300 odd pages are divided into these 8 (so each geographical location has around "38 pages" dedicated to that specific location and its services).
So what I was planning to do was simply put the correct location-specific NAP in the footer of each of the location-specific pages (so each run of location-specific "38 pages" will have the relevant [single] NAP in the footer of every page).
But my co-worker said only put the correct [single] NAP in the footer of the 8 location home(/landing) pages within the site, rather than on every page.
Hope that makes sense [it's been a long week ;-I]
-
(Miriam responding here, but signed into Mozzer Alliance right now)
Hi Luke,
If you mean in the footer and it's 10 or less locations, I'd say it's okay to put the NAP for the 8 businesses there, but not in the main body of the page.
My preferred method would be to put the complete NAP, in Schema, for Location A at the top of City Landing Page A, complete NAP for Location B at the top or City Landing Page B, etc. I would not suggest putting all of this NAP anywhere else on the site but the Contact Page.
-
Thanks Miriam - it sure does - their website is divided up by location, so I'm planning to put the relevant NAP at the bottom of every page through the website (8 locations and NAPs in total - 300 pages) - a colleague suggested just puting the NAP on each of the 8 location homepages though I suspect it would help more if the NAP was at foot of every page (so long as the correct NAP on the correct page ha!) - is that the right thing to do?
-
Hey Luke!
NAP consistency was judged to be the second most influential pack ranking factor on this year's Local Search Ranking Factors (https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors) so, yes, it's of major importance! Hope this helps.
-
When it comes to NAP, it should be as close to an exact match as you're able to achieve. Inconsistency in this area - while not the biggest detriment you can have - should be avoided.
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
-
May Faceted Navigation via ajax #parameter cause duplicated content issues?
We are going to implement a faceted navigation for an ecommerce site of about 1000 products.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
Faceted navigation is implemented via ajax/javascript which adds to the URL a large number of #parameters.
Faceted pages are canonicalizing to page without any parameters. We do not want google to index any of the faceted pages at this point. Will google include pages with #parameters in their index?
Can I tell google somehow to ignore #parameters and not to index them?
Could this setup cause any SEO problems for us in terms of crawl bandwidth and or link equity?0 -
Changing title tags - any potential issues?
Hello all, I am planning to change the title tags throughout a site and am vaguely aware (perhaps wrongly!) that changing title tags across a site is a risk factor - can be a spam flag if changes (to a specific title tag) are implemented too regularly, for example. Would you change title tags across a site in one go, or implement changes gradually - to avoid any risk of upsetting Google. Do you have any insights/tips on the implementation of title tag changes?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart1 -
Is there an issue with my site?
Been mostly hanging around top of page two for the last couple of years for “Liverpool Wedding photographer” although got myself on page 1 for “Liverpool photographer” I have split the title of the page to target these two keywords. I took the Liverpool photographer off the title to see if it was being detrimental to the “Liverpool wedding photographer” I didn’t see no increase in ranking so put it back as I get a bit of commercial work from it. Since last year I have got onto page 1 at least three times around position 5-6. Within a week or two I start sliding down again and end up back at top of page two. I could understand this slow push out if my competitors were busy SEO wise but from what I have seen they are not. There is a guy using the keywords in URL and calls himself “Liverpool wedding photographer” last time I checked he literally had no links but is in the first 5 positions. I have I think a better link profile than every one else. Although I am on and off with Facebook and Instagram, (more off) so that probably isn’t helping. Although I have a colleague in the video side of things and he doesn’t use social media at all and it hasn’t harmed him. A few years ago I was burned quite badly by a total charlatan. He sunk my home page to page 4. He talked the talk about creating landing pages but his methods were shoddy to say the least. I can’t believe I was taken in by him, although I was only with him for 2 months. He was still using spammy link techniques to generate lots of toxic links for me! I disavowed all of his links and put the keywords back on the home page and was back to my usual top of page 2 position within a week. Since then I have disavowed all directory links and anything not wedding related. I have an article which ranks 1st or second for “Nikon CLS”. I have also another article of 2000 words or so on another reasonable placed photography website. A few links from other vendors or people I have taken photographs for. I have about 10 featured weddings with a link on 4 good weddings blogs. I don’t think a massive amount of blog comments although I have stopped doing this. If I look at most of the competitors these are their main links, with directories as well! Last winter I put a quite substantial article about documentary wedding photography on my home page. I flew to number 2, although I photographed The World Transformed (the alternative labour conference in Liverpool). I got a lot of clicks to a gallery page (few thousand off social media} so I don’t know if that coincided with it. Same thing – watching the website go down a few positions every day until within just over a week or two I was about 4<sup>th</sup> on page 2! Its like my website is on a spring which can push into page 1 but rebounds back to top of page 2. I am staring to worry that my site has been marked as a bad character in some way because I get what seems to be rough treatment from google compared to my peers. I have written I think 4 or 5 (1500 word) articles the last couple of months talking about lenses and wedding photography related topics and Google pushed me back to page 1, peaking At position 5. I was there for a few weeks and then the slide happened again. Bit demoralised at the moment, what to do? Any help or pointers would be most appreciated. Best wishes. David.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WallerD0 -
Client site is lacking content. Can we still optimize without it?
We just signed a new client whose site is really lacking in terms of content. Our plan is to add content to the site in order to achieve some solid on-page optimization. Unfortunately the site design makes adding content very difficult! Does anyone see where we may be going wrong? Is added content really the only way to go? http://empathicrecovery.com/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Will changing Google Places address hurt rankings?
I have a client transferring ownership of their service business (photo booth rental). The current listed address will change, so my main concern is preserving the rankings during the transition. Should I change the Google Local listing to a new physical address, or change it to "serve a surrounding area"? It seems best to set as "serving a surrounding area", but I know Google is really weird about making local listing changes. I've seen and heard about countless listings falling completely off the map after being updated. Any advice appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Joes_Ideas0 -
Ecombuffet.com are offering a Rescue Review focused on Panda - Penguin and identifying issues. Has anyone used this service or aware of the organisation in general?
http://www.ecombuffet.com/rescue-review.htm . I have 2 sites that have definitely been hit by penguin and getting worse so am thinking of paying for this service as nothing I do seems to stop the slide (more like a plummet). Any comments welcome.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shaann1 -
Massive drop in organic rankings - but strange issues
Hi guys, We experienced a massive drop in organic rankings on Saturday 29 October, a drop of around 80%.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cashchampion
I have received no notifications in webmaster tools
The site still ranks for its name so we are not banned
The site has been around since 2007
My mozrank and trustrank are very high (higher than sites that now still rank while we don't)
The strange this is the homepage doesn't rank for the main keyword (which it always did), but now a deeper page ranks for the main keyword, albeit on page 4.
Quite a few of our sites were affected, even though they target different industries, different countries, with different hosts, different unique content, different links (for one we havent even started link building and it was getting 250 UV per day, and now 8). I am completely confused by this.
Any advice or direction would be extremely helpful. Thanks so much0 -
Indexing issue?
Hey guys when I do a search of site:thetechblock.com query in Google I don't seem to see any recent posts (nothing for August). In Google webmaster I see that the site is being crawled (I think), but I'm not sure. I also see the the sitemaps are being indexed but again it just seems really odd that I'm not seeing these in Google results. SEO seems all good too with SEO Moz. Is there something I'm not getting?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ttb0