Local SEO is a valuable strategy, but most companies face this major problem with their campaigns.
For most companies, national SEO is a lost cause. The online market, on a national scale, is simply too large to overcome at this point. Ranking for a high-volume national keyword would require you to match the efforts of billion-dollar brands and long-established authorities to get a fraction of their attention, which demands time, money, and effort that most businesses simply don’t have.
Instead, the local environment is wide open. Pursuing a local SEO strategy is far more cost effective, getting companies greater visibility faster and cheaper—but there’s one major obstacle holding most companies back from the greatest possible results.
What’s in a Name?
The problem lies with your business’s NAP—your name, address, and phone number. Google uses this information to categorize your business in a local environment, so it needs to be accurate and consistent. But unfortunately, it isn’t enough to just make sure this information is accurate on your site. In fact, Google scours the web, looking at hundreds of third-party sources to find information on your business and make sure it’s accurate.
If Google finds any major name, address, or phone number discrepancies on these sources, it could compromise your domain authority and interfere with your ability to rank in a local environment. Even a minor spelling difference could interfere with your results.
The Best Course of Action
Fortunately, any damage done by these incorrect local citations can be corrected and reversed. All you have to do is track down the inaccurate entries and get them changed. If you have lots of time on your hands, you can run a bunch of searches on your business to see where you’re listed, create accounts on each of them or write to each of their webmasters, and manually update the information so it is correct.
If you don’t have a lot of time on your hands, let a professional handle it. At Quez Media, we’ll do a thorough scan of your business’s information throughout the web and update your NAP so there are no inconsistencies.
