Name Address Phone number – NAP

Local SEO is not difficult but it does require that you pay attention to the details and getting your name, address and phone number (NAP) correctly formatted and consistent across all of your citations is one of the areas where you really do have to pay attention to detail.

There are plenty of posts out there about how to do this for a US business but not so many for those of us in the UK so rest of this post will take a quick look at first getting your NAP correctly formatted.

Correct Format for UK Addresses

The address for a UK business should be correctly formated as follows:

Line 1 – the business name
Line 2 – building number and street name
Line 3 – locality name, if required
Line 4 – POST TOWN, please print in capitals
Line 5 – POSTCODE, please print in capitals, in full and on a separate line

Examples

Bowler Hat
112 Zellig – The Custard Factory
Digbeth
BIRMINGHAM
B9 4AA

On a website that may look a little more like this:

Bowler Hat, 112 Zellig – The Custard Factory, Digbeth, Birmingham, B9 4AA.

Telephone Number Formats

Telephone number should also be correctly formatted and the format varies around the country so please check here for the correct format:
http://www.area-codes.org.uk/

Generally this will be dependant upon the area code being either 3, 4 or 6 digits and formatting will be:

3-4-4
xxx xxxx xxxx
0121 314 2001

4-3-4
xxxx xxx xxxx
0201 234 5678

5-5
xxxxx xxxxx
01204 12345

5-6
xxxxx xxxxxx
01204 123456

There are also some variations on this theme and some people like to divide the parts of the phone number a space, others with a hypen (-) and some folks even like to do this with a period (.).

0121 314 2001
0121-314-2001
0121.314.2001

Consistency is key

If all of this seems a bit fussy, well, it kind of is. Ultimately, what really matters most is consistency so pick a format for your address and phone number including any variable elements of your name (Ltd, Limited) and stick with it.

Don’t forget consistency with any offline materials – if you already have a perfectly well-formatted address and phone number on your marketing materials then using across your online listings makes a lot of sense.

Putting the pieces together

The final NAP with address and phone number is going to look something like:

Bowler Hat, 112 Zellig – The Custard Factory, Digbeth, Birmingham, B9 4AA. 0121 314 2001

NAP – Name, Address & Phone Number

Now you have your perfectly formatted and consistent address you now want to make sure that your website, social platforms, profiles and all business directories use the exact same address.

Pay particular attention to:

• Your Website
• Google Places / Google+ Local Listings
• Business Directory Listings

If you have lots of existing listings then you can track them down with some advanced search queries. You are going to want to search for your business name, postcode and remove any mentions of your own site. That is going to look something like:

“Name” “Post Code” -www.yoursite.co.uk

So, for Bowler Hat it would be:

“Bowler Hat” “B9 4AA” -www.bowlerhat.co.uk

This will give you the tools to find and update any existing listings that exist so get your Google-Fu on and track down all those listings, audit the name, address and phone number details and get yourself a spreadsheet together.

Don’t get caught NAPping

Getting your name, address and phone number consistent across your website, social profiles and external citations is not the entire picture but it will get you a good way to Local SEO success.

If you have any questions or comments give us a shout over on Facebook or Twitter and we are only to happy to help.