NAP consistency
Keeping a business's name, address and phone number identical across its website, business profile and third-party directories.
LocalBusiness listings
Local citations
Mentions of a business's name, address and phone on third-party sites such as directories, industry bodies, chambers of commerce and data aggregators.
In full
Citations corroborate a business's existence and details across independent sources, contributing to prominence and helping resolve conflicting data. Quality and relevance beat volume: a professional register or local chamber listing is worth more than dozens of generic directories. Data aggregators propagate details to many downstream sites, so errors introduced there resurface repeatedly if not corrected at source.
Example
A dental practice corrects a wrong suite number at a data aggregator, and the error stops reappearing in smaller directories.
Related terms
Google Business Profile
The free business listing that powers a company's presence in Google Maps, the local pack and business panels, renamed from Google My…
Local SEO
Optimising a business's visibility for geographically constrained searches, across both the map pack and localised organic results.
Unlinked mentions
References to a brand, product or person in published content that do not include a hyperlink, and which can sometimes be converted into…
Multi-location SEO
Managing local search presence across many branches, franchises or practitioners, at a scale where consistency and governance become the…