NAP Citation refers to an online mention of a business’s Name, Address, and Phone number together—commonly abbreviated as NAP. These mentions act as local signals of legitimacy across directories, listings, websites, and social platforms.
Overview
NAP citations play a central role in local SEO, helping search engines verify the existence, location, and credibility of a business. Consistency in NAP across multiple platforms enhances trust, can positively impact rankings in the Local Pack, and directly enhances visibility in local search results.
Structured NAP citations (in directories like Yelp or social profiles such as Facebook) are influential, whereas unstructured mentions (e.g., press articles) still support visibility if accurate. Maintaining uniformity across all citations is essential to avoid confusion and preserve SEO performance.
Examples in Marketing & Design Contexts
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Web Design: Ensuring your NAP appears in the header, footer, and Contact page—matching across all device views—improves crawlability and local entity recognition.
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SEO: Accurate NAP citations across third-party directories strengthen eligibility for the Local Pack, boosting local search visibility and trust.
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Digital Marketing: Embedding local schema markup for business info ensures that NAP details are machine-readable—supporting LLMs and AI extraction for location-based queries.
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PPC: Consistent, accurate business information ensures that location extensions and context-aware ad automations display correctly, reducing misdirection and increasing credibility.
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LLMO (Generative SEO): When AI-driven tools query local business info, consistently formatted NAPs increase the chance your business is accurately cited or summarized.
Related Terms
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[Local Pack] — the high-visibility SERP feature influenced by NAP consistency
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[Local SEO] — optimization discipline that relies heavily on accurate citations
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[Schema Markup] — structured data layer that helps NAP and other business details be machine-consumable