As you build your online business, you want to make sure everything is running as it should. For any website’s SEO campaign to succeed, you need to conduct website audits frequently, or more specifically, NAP audits.
The best way to receive accurate results against the competition is by measuring where your site stands and what needs to be fixed. By doing so, you can accurately determine and grow your site’s local search rankings and online presence.
NAP Audits Determine Local Search Rankings
NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number, so naturally, your NAP citation should appear as your business name, business address, and business phone number. Throughout the lifetime of your site, the NAP should always remain consistent to boost rankings. However, as your site grows, your NAP may begin to change. Hence, the importance of NAP audits.
The goal is to ensure your NAP information is the same across all search engines. A NAP audit will detect if there’s been any change. An audit is critical for getting accurate information to your customers and any business looking to drive organic traffic, gain leads and rank well in local search results.
NAP consistency is not to be taken lightly; it’s an essential aspect of any effective SEO campaign. Creating more content and posting on social media is undoubtedly necessary to SEO, too. But NAP should be the first thing you look at if you want to increase your search rankings.
Getting a professional audit from a local SEO expert can help you improve your search rankings and dominate the competition. Starting local can help determine how to develop an effective SEO campaign to fit a more vast, ever-expanding audience.
While conducting a local audit on your business listing may seem like a difficult task, here’s a list of five local listing auditing services to help you get started.
1. Moz Local
Want to get the most out of your online presence? Moz Local offers a variety of services to improve and preserve your online presence. Conducting audits to check the state of your business listings and citations can help ensure you’re getting the most out of your SEO campaign. Moz Local verifies your listing on multiple different search engines and identifies missing or inaccurate information. Such a service can help you learn how to take advantage of every search opportunity.
Moz Local services allow you to monitor your online presence’s status to ensure data accuracy across all platforms.
2. BrightLocal
As mentioned before, NAP consistency is an important component of any SEO campaign — and BrightLocal agrees. To build consumer trust, you must maintain a consistent NAP. Inaccurate or missing NAP information will cause significant inconveniences for consumers, and they’ll become more likely to be frustrated. BrightLocal’s 2018 Local Citations Trust Report revealed that more than 9 out of 10 consumers say they become irritated with incorrect information from online directories.
BrightLocal offers services to build and correct NAP citations to ensure your rankings grow in the right direction. Their services identify and uncover irregularities and clean them up accordingly.
3. Yext
Yext’s services offer local listings management to understand how inaccurate NAP listings can negatively affect your search rankings. Manual listing updates are tedious and time-consuming. With Yext, you can banish inaccurate NAP listings everywhere with just one click.
Yext also offers convenient and user-friendly services to verify your listings and protect them from unwarranted changes or mishaps. You can also monitor and manage your listings and receive reports updating you on the performance of your listings. More accurate listings are more likely to attract consumers and improve the overall status of your business.
4. Whitespark
Are you looking to stand out from the rest of the crowd? Whitespark helps you do so by building and cleaning up NAP citations to increase local rankings. Whitespark offers a NAP citation audit service that identifies messy and confusing citations, corrects or removes inconsistencies and variations, and perfects your citation profile.
As your business grows, it’s typical for incorrect NAP info to creep into your listings. However, though it’s common, you don’t want it to become a regular occurrence. Whitespark’s team expertly analyzes your listings across all directories to ensure your information remains up-to-date and consistent.
5. Birdeye
Birdeye allows you to manage your listings and online engagement to grow your search rankings better everywhere.
Birdeye’s services motor your NAP listings and ensure consistency so users can easily find your business. Their services enable you to manage your listings for every location across 50+ sites.
You can also view how your business is performing with consumers. Birdeye offers you a personal SEO-enhanced profile that showcases your reviews from over 150 sites. This service allows you to take advantage of your reviews to drive traffic, enhance search results.
Conclusion
Consistent NAP data directly affects the success of your SEO campaign. Despite all the many other factors that go into SEO, NAP consistency remains of utmost importance. Finding a trustworthy and reliable local listing audit service can help ensure your business’s success and grow your audience.
Missing or incorrect NAP information can cause more harm than many realize. Even small inconsistencies can negatively impact your local search rankings. Consumers become frustrated and less likely to engage with your business. Dedicating the appropriate time to ensure NAP consistency can help grow your online presence, reach a higher ranking, and drive potential consumers to your door.
