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://mza.bundledseo.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
-
Google update this wknd or page title issue?
Hi, I've seen a big ranking drop for many major terms, for a particular site, just on Google. This happened Fri 20th or Sat 21st just gone. I don't see any news on an algorithm update over the weekend.I had changed many of the sites major page title protocols 2 weeks ago but a) I would have expected any negative effect before now and not all at once b) the protocols were carefully crafted to avoid traffic drops for major terms and c) i'm seeing traffic drops for keywords that still start at the beginning of the page title d) im seeing drops for some pages which are still using the OLD page titles. I had even tested the protocol on a number of pages in advance to ensure it wouldn't cause problems. As a bit of background - the title protocols were changed to make them more user friendly and less keyword heavy. CTR from search improved so was hoping for better not worse rankings! Ideas, gratefully appreciated.Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyMacLean0 -
Issue with Site Map - how critical would you rank this in terms of needing a fix?
A problem has been introduced onto our sitemap whereby previously excluded URLs are no longer being correctly excluded. These are returning a HTTP 400 Bad Request server response, although do correctly redirect to users. We have around 2300 pages of content, and around 600-800 of these previously excluded URLs, An example would be http://www.naturalworldsafaris.com/destinations/africa-and-the-indian-ocean/botswana/suggested-holidays/botswana-classic-camping-safari/Dates and prices.aspx (the page does correctly redirect to users). The site is currently being rebuilt and only has a life span of a few months. The cost our current developers have given us for resolving this is quite high with this in mind. I was just wondering: How much of a critical issue would you view this? Would it be sufficient (bearing in mind this is an interim measure) to change these pages so that they had a canonical or a redirect - they would however remain on the sitemap. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KateWaite
Kate0 -
How to switch brand domain and address previous use of domain
We recently acquired a new domain to replace existing as it better fits our brand. We have little/no organic value on existing domain so switching is not an issue. However the newly acquired domain was previously used in a different industry and has inbound links with significant spam scores. How can we let Google know that these links are not valid for our business and start rebuilding reputation of the domain? Disavow tool?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marlette0 -
Domain remains the same IP address is changing on same server only last 3 digits changing. Will this effect rankings
Dear All, We have taken and a product called webacelator from our hosting UKfast and our ip address is changing. UKFasts asked to point DNS to different IP in order to route the traffic through webacelator, which will enhance browsing speed. I am concerned, will this change effect our rankings. Your responses highly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tigersohelll0 -
Canonical Issue with urls
I saw some urls of my site showing duplicate page content, duplicate page title issues on crawl reports. So I have set canonical url for every urls , that has dupicate content / page title. But still SeoMoz crawl test is showing issue. I am giving here one url with issue. The below given urls shown duplicate content and duplicate page title with some other urls all are given below. Checked URL http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7635 dup page content http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7622&category_id=270&colors=Black_Tones&click=colors&ci=1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | trixmediainc
http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7622 dup page Title http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7636&category_id=270&sizes=12x15,12x18&click=sizes
http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7636
http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7622&category_id=270&colors=Black_Tones&click=colors&ci=1
http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7622 But I have set canonical url for all these urls already , that is :- http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7622 This should actually solve the problem right ? Search engine should identify the canonical url as original url and only should consider that. Thanks0 -
Merging Sites: Will redirecting the old homepage to an internal page on the new site cause issues?
I've ended up with two sites which have similar content (but not duplicate) and target similar keywords, rather than trying to maintain two sites I would like to merge the sites together. The old site is more of a traditional niche site and targets a particular set of keywords on its homepage, the new site is more of an authority site with a magazine type homepage and targets the same set of keywords from an internal page. My question is: Should I redirect the old site's homepage to the relevant internal page on the new website...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lara_dar
...or should I redirect the old site's homepage to the new site's homepage? (the old site's homepage backlinks are a mixture of partial match keyword anchor text, naked URLs and branded anchor text) I am in two minds (a & b!) (a) Redirecting to the internal page would be great for ranking as there are some decent backlinks and the content is similar (b) But usually when you do a 301 redirect the homepage usually directs to the new homepage and some of the old site's links are related to the domain rather than the keyword (e.g. http://www.site.com) and some people will be looking for the site's homepage. What do you think? Your help is much appreciated (and hope this makes sense...!)0 -
Can I Improve Organic Ranking by Restrict Website Access to Specific IP Address or Geo Location?
I am targeting my website in US so need to get high organic ranking in US web search. One of my competitor is restricting website access to specific IP address or Geo location. I have checked multiple categories to know more. What's going on with this restriction and why they make it happen? One of SEO forum is also restricting website access to specific location. I can understand that, it may help them to stop thread spamming with unnecessary Sign Up or Q & A. But, why Lamps Plus have set this? Is there any specific reason? Can I improve my organic ranking? Restriction may help me to save and maintain user statistic in terms of bounce rate, average page views per visit, etc...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit1 -
Pagination and links per page issue.
Hi all, I have a listings based website that just doesn't seem to want to pass rank to the inner pages. See here for an example: http://www.business4sale.co.uk/Buy/Hotels-For-Sale-in-the-UK I know that there are far too many links on this page and I am working on reducing the number by altering my grid classes to output fewer links. The page also displays a number of links to other page numbers for these results. My script adds the string " - Page2" to the end of the title, description and URL when the user clicks on page two of these results. My question is: Would an excessive amount(200+) of links on a page result in less PR being passed to this page(looking spammy)? And would using rel canonical on page numbers greater than 1 result in better trust/ranking? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mulith0