How to fix NAP inconsistency

Before you start

• A list of every place your business is listed
• Your canonical details agreed

The steps

1. 1

   Step 1: Write down the canonical version

   Exact legal or trading name, exact address format, one phone number.

2. 2

   Step 2: Search for your business name

   And your phone number. List every result that mentions you.

3. 3

   Step 3: Check the obvious places

   Website, business profile, social accounts, invoices, directories, industry listings.

4. 4

   Step 4: Find the stale ones

   Old directory entries with a previous number are the most common problem and the least visible.

5. 5

   Step 5: Update each to match exactly

   Including punctuation, abbreviations and suite numbers.

6. 6

   Step 6: Fix the source on your site

   Generate every appearance from one configuration value so they cannot drift again.

7. 7

   Step 7: Re-check in three months

   Aggregators repopulate from old data, and some entries reappear.

What counts as inconsistent

"Ltd" in one place and "Limited" in another. Two phone numbers. An address missing a unit number. A trading name in some places and a legal name in others with nothing connecting them.

The structural fix

On the website, keep the details in exactly one place and render every appearance from it. This site generates every instance of the name, phone and address from a single configuration file, which makes drift impossible rather than unlikely.

The listings that cause the most trouble

Data aggregators supply many smaller directories automatically, so a wrong entry at the aggregator level repopulates listings you have already corrected. Fix those first and the downstream ones follow. Old listings from a previous business name or a closed location are the second problem, and they need to be claimed and marked closed rather than merely ignored, because an unclaimed duplicate competes with you.

The background behind this

Local SEO when customers do not come to your address covers the reasoning in about 3 minutes — free, ungated, written from client work.

Who wrote this

Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada, Ireland and Pakistan. These procedures are the ones I run on client work, written down rather than invented — including the ones where the honest answer is that the fix is not available on your current hosting.