Summary:

Citation consistency, or the presence of correct Name, Address, Phone + Website (NAP+W) everywhere the business is referenced across the web, is the foundation for local search engine optimization. It enables businesses to rank higher for their core search terms and leads to more customer traffic — both online and off.

In the early days of Local SEO, all citation building and cleanup was managed manually. It was incredibly time consuming. Today, new tools make the process of assessing the damage of citation inconsistency and estimating the timeline for corrections much faster.