NAP consistency & local citations

NAP, short for Name, Address, Phone, is the unsexy plumbing of local SEO. Get it wrong and every other thing you do is fighting against fragmented, contradictory data. Get it right and the rest of your work compounds. Most businesses get it 80% right. The last 20% is where the trust signals leak.

Why citations still matter, even though they're "less important"

You'll read takes claiming citations don't matter any more. Those takes are partly right. Building 200 cheap directory listings is no longer a strategy because Google has explicitly down-weighted citation count as a ranking factor. But citations absolutely still matter for two reasons.

Step 1: pick your canonical NAP

Before you audit anything, decide what your canonical NAP is. Be specific about format. Pick one and only one form of each component, then enforce it everywhere.

1. 1

   Decide your canonical Name

   Match Companies House (or your local equivalent) and signage. Pick "ABC Plumbing" or "ABC Plumbing Ltd", not both. If you trade under a different name, decide which is canonical for your GBP and citations and stick with it.

2. 2

   Standardise the Address format

   Pick one format and use it everywhere. "Street" vs "St", "Road" vs "Rd", whether to include the building name, whether to include a unit number, capitalisation. Include the postcode in standard format with the space (for UK: "SW1A 1AA", not "SW1A1AA").

3. 3

   Pick one phone number, one format

   UK businesses should standardise on the +44 international form OR the local 0XX form, but not flip between them. Tracking numbers that vary by source destroy NAP consistency. If you must use them, ensure your canonical NAP is the only one indexed publicly.

4. 4

   Document it as your single source of truth

   Write it down. Put it in your CMS, your team handbook, your onboarding doc for any agency you work with. Anyone updating any listing should reference this document.

Good vs bad NAP examples

Step 2: audit the top 20 citations

You don't need 200 citation sources. You need 20 high-authority ones to be accurate. For UK local businesses, here's the priority list. Visit each, check NAP, fix what's wrong.

Step 3: hunt down duplicates

Duplicate listings are worse than incorrect ones. They split your reviews and prominence signals across two records that Google cannot easily merge. Common causes:

• You moved premises and the old address is still live somewhere
• You changed your business name (e.g. took on a partner) and the old name is still listed
• A previous occupant of your premises had a listing that's still indexed
• Two separate teams created listings on the same directory
• A user-generated submission (someone other than you) created a duplicate
• An old aggregator pulled stale data and never refreshed it
• You added a service area in addition to a previous listing without merging the two

Search Google for your business name with and without "Ltd", with and without your old address, with and without your old phone number. Anything that turns up needs to be either claimed and corrected, or formally requested for removal. For GBP specifically, Google has a "report duplicate" flow that works reasonably well if you have control of the canonical listing.

Step 4: fix the website itself

Your own website is also a citation. The most polished agency-built sites sometimes miss this because the NAP gets baked into a logo image, or a stylised footer that crawlers can't easily parse. Make sure:

• The NAP appears on your homepage in plain text (not as an image)
• It's wrapped in LocalBusiness JSON-LD schema markup
• It's identical to the canonical NAP, same form, same punctuation
• It appears in your footer on every page
• If you have multiple locations, each has its own page with its own NAP
• Phone numbers are clickable on mobile (tel: links)
• Address is geo-coded with latitude/longitude in schema

Common mistakes to avoid

Schema: the structured-data layer

Add LocalBusiness JSON-LD to your homepage. Include name, address (broken down into street, locality, region, postcode, country), telephone, geo coordinates, opening hours, and a sameAs array linking to your social profiles, GBP listing, and key directory listings. This explicitly tells crawlers and AI systems "these listings all refer to the same entity", which strengthens entity resolution.

For multi-location businesses, each location page should have its own LocalBusiness schema with that location's specific details. The corporate homepage can use Organization schema linking out to all the location pages via hasPart or department relationships, depending on your legal structure.

The move/rebrand checklist

When a location moves or rebrands, work through this list before announcing the change publicly. Updating GBP first then catching everything else over weeks is the most common path to long-term inconsistency.

• Update GBP (name, address, phone, all on the same day)
• Update Bing Places
• Update Apple Business Connect
• Update website homepage, footer, contact page
• Update LocalBusiness schema
• Update Yell, Yelp, Facebook Page
• Update second-tier directories from your initial citation audit
• Update sector-specific directories
• Update local council and chamber of commerce listings
• Update Google Search Console (verify new property if domain changed)
• Update Google Analytics property name
• Set up 301 redirects from old URLs if the site changed
• Notify your accountant to update Companies House
• Update any PR distribution lists
• Schedule a 30-day citation re-audit to catch anything missed

Numbers to know

Where to go next

With clean NAP and citation footprint sorted, the next leverage points are your GBP itself and your review pipeline. NAP is the foundation. GBP optimisation and reviews are what compound on top of it.