Consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone)
Your Name, Address, and Phone must be identical everywhere they appear.
What NAP consistency means
NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone number. The rule is that these three pieces of information must match exactly across your website, your Google Business Profile, your LinkedIn page, and any directory you appear in. Not approximately — exactly.
Any inconsistency — a different phone format, a changed street abbreviation, an outdated suite number — is a signal to both search engines and AI crawlers that one of the two sources is wrong. They resolve the ambiguity by trusting neither.
How to get this right
- — Pick a canonical format and stick to it. Decide once: 'St.' or 'Street'; '+32' or '0032'.
- — Keep your footer, contact page, and schema.org LocalBusiness markup in sync.
- — Audit your external listings once a year — Google, Facebook, Yelp, trade directories.
- — Never put NAP in an image. Use text so crawlers can read it.