It’s more than just a mid-day treat!
One of the most effective and easiest ways for a small business owner to effect their own Search Engine Ranking is to ensure that you have a properly constructed and published NAP.
Now – I love a good nap as much as the next 30(something) year old, BUT what we are talking about here is something MUCH more powerful.
The NAP is the Name, Address and Phone Number of your company. These days, due mostly to the adoption of Digital Marketing, the NAP could be adapted to an NAPHEW – Name, Address, Phone Number, Hours of Operation, Email and Website.
It is important that this information be clearly present on your website, accounted for in your SEO program AND consistent across all citations and search engine listings online.
Take a moment to jot it down:
Business Name: Bridgetown Marketing
Address: 50 Kerr Parkway, Lake Oswego Oregon
Phone: 503-893-5468
Hours of Operation: Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm
Email: info@bridgetown-marketing.com
Website: Bridgetown-Marketing.com
Once you have these elements clearly defined, you need to know where to put them.
- The Home Page of your Website: This information is most useful to your audience if it can be made available in the footer of every page. If your website allows you to make these changes, work on placing them into the footer while retaining the look and feel you want for your site.
- The Contact Page of your Website: Make this information clear and hard to miss on your contact page. Consider also adding an embedded Google Map and directions if you are marketing a business with a storefront.
- Citations Online: There are numerous search engine’s outside of the heavy hitters like Google, Yahoo and Bing. These smaller search engines inform and propagate their information to those larger listing sites. For that reason it is important that you have a consistent piece of information being shared. Listing software sites, such as YEXT, can (for a fee) keep all of these citations correct for you. If you are marketing your company on a budget, you can manually update those listings. Just be sure to keep everything CONSISTENT. That means the same spelling, the same description, the same phone number, the same email address across ALL listings.
I hope you have found this information helpful. This is just one of the MANY elements that go into creating an inbound marketing plan that will work for your business online. If you are interested in finding out more on inbound marketing options, OR if you just want someone to get this done for you (so you can take a nap), give me a call at 503-893-5468. I would be happy to take the wheel!
