NAP & USER EXPERIENCE ARE CRUCIAL TO LOCAL SEO

NAP & USER EXPERIENCE ARE CRUCIAL TO LOCAL SEO

While it’s no secret that mobile usage surpassed desktop usage in 2015, another fact that often goes unnoticed is the change in user behavior in terms of the number of devices they use.  This posses new challenges for local business, as users move between devices their search and discovery experience will differ as part of local pack and local algorithms are weighted differently, namely proximity of business to a user location.

NAP consistency is an important part of Google’s local and local pack algorithms, and building citations with a consistent NAP to your Google my business listing and listed online addresses can influence your local rankings.

However, having a consistent NAP is also important to the user journey as online directories and social bookmarking sites aren’t just by Google they’re used by humans too.

WHEN THE USER JOURNEY STARTS.

A lots of people consider the user journey and brand experience to start when the user makes the first inquiry or spends significate time on company’s website. However, the journey starts a lot sooner. Think with Google data shows that there five touchpoints that more often not lead to a purchase / affirmative site action:.

• Used a search engine
• Visited a store or other location
• Visited a retailer website or app
• Visited another website or app
• Used a map

The user journey starts when they first see your brand either in search results listing, in the local park, on a map, or at your physical brick-and-mortar store.. local search is crucial part of this journey and is even more important given that up to 78% of local-intent mobile searches results in an offline store visit within 24 hours. This is where the consistent NAP becomes important, because users need consistent information in order to progress their journey. A lot of the time we make an assumption that users find our local businesses and brand through our websites, our guest posts and outreach, and our Google My Business Listings.

INFLUENCING THE USER JOURNEY AT A SEARCH STAGE.

When users are performing their first searches, this is your first opportunity to make an impression and be a part of the user journey.

If you’re appearing prominently in local pack or within the SERPs, you want your user to click through to content that both provides value and satisfies their user intent lazy local pages help nobody.

A lazy local page is in effect a doorway page, a thin page that offers little value to the user and has the sole purposes of trying to rank for local search terms. Google doesn’t like doorway pages(due to them offering poor user experience) and rolled out a doorway page’ ranking adjustment algorithm in 2015.

The possum update in 2016 also went some way to tackling poor quality and spam, but this is a tactic that has been persistent with and in a lot of vertical they are still effective ( until something better comes along).

Google’s official support documentation defines doorways as:. Sites or pages created to rank highly for specific search queries. They are bad for user because they can lead to multiple similar pages if user search results where each results ends up taking the user to essentially the same destination. They can also lead users to intermediate pages that are not as useful as the final destination.

Even if you rewrite the content on these pages making sure they’re not duplicate but they all carry the exact same message just with different city targeted, they offer no value at all.

Creating Good Local Pages

Admittedly, it’s a lot easier for companies that have physical brick-and-mortar stores in the locations that they want to target to create local pages with high value. But this doesn’t mean that it cant be done for companies offering an intangible product or service with a local focus. Google’s search Quality Rater Guidelines define content in two parts:  this is the way you should look at local search

• The main content
• The supporting content

When someone in Kenya searches for (plumber in Nairobi), Google has to break down the query into both main and supporting sections. From this, Google retrieves relevant results with weighting and personalization given to the local intent of the query. The main content of your website should reflect the product /services that you offer, with supporting content elements adding value and topical relevance around the location.  This can be implemented in a non -commercial way through the blog, as guides, or as resources.

NAP CONSISTENCY

As mentioned before or inaccurate NAP can lead to frustrated users, and potentially lost leads.

Common Reasons for Inconsistent NAP

From experience, inconsistent NAP can be caused by a number of human errors and business changes, including:

• changing business address and not updating previously built citations, directory listings etc
• Having a different store address to the company registered address and using both online
• Generating different phone numbers for attribution tracking purposes.

Not only can all of the above cause issues for your local SEO, they can also cause a number of user experience issues and poor user experience leads to loss of sales and damage to your brand. User experience also extends beyond the local pack and SERPs to your website, how the local journey is managed and whether it can satisfy all local intents. Being able to track and accurately report on the success of marketing activities is vital. However, there is a case for over reporting and over attribution in some cases especially when it comes to local SEO.

Google local Pack User Experience & Atrribution

Google’s local pack runs on a different algorithms to the traditional organic search results, and is heavy influencing by user location when making the search. Google My Business has an attribution problem and more often than not a lot of clicks from GMB listing are classified as direct traffic rather than organic traffic in Google Analytics.

Having a NAP means you’re more likely to appear within the local pack and if you’re in the local pack, studies have shown that you you’re likely to get a high percentage of clicks on the results page. If you’re likely to get a lot of clicks, it means you’re going to have a lot of users expecting fast loading pages and prominent information to satisfy their search intents.

Directory Attribution

In order to track marketing efforts, organizations generate unique phone numbers for every directory that they submit the business. Also, A lot of directories like to generate Google My Business listings based off of the data you input, as a sort of added service. This leads to multiple Google My Business listings being generated for individual locations, with different phone numbers and sometimes different map pin locations. This is bad for user experience, as they’ve faced with multiple choices for one location with only one being correct and is also confusing for the user and means they have to take an extra, unnecessary action in order to engage with your business.

Avoiding Spam Marketers

Another common reason I’ve seen business use false numbers on directory listings when building them for SEO purposes, one needs to avoid the spam phone call that follow. Well, using a false number prevents the spam calls from reaching you, it also prevent genuine customers as well.

GETTING LOCAL RIGHT

Local searches often represent higher than average conversion rates, as customers seeking out local product or service are likely to pursue and complete their actions that being said, a lot of local businesses are still not taking full advantage of the opportunities in front of them and trying in performance and user satisfaction.