NAT or NAP, Your Website May Not Be Legal
Whilst looking for an example to show a possible new customer, I noticed one client’s website was missing the company name and address.
You guessed it: NAT – Name, Address, Telephone number. Or NAP if you drop the “Tele”. AKA Business Information.
On this page you can read about:
- legal requirements for showing NAT on your website
- why you probably need it anyway
- how to stop hackers scraping it
- how to maintain it with BlueTree CMS
- what to do next
Rules for Business Information on Websites
Your website is an official business document, like an invoice. According to the Companies Act (2006), whether your business is incorporated or not, with one exception, your website must display your Company Information. The actual information required varies by the type of registration, but all include:
- the registered name or trading name
- registered or trading address
- registration number and place of registration (if registered)
- sometimes, trade organisations to which your business subscribes
The only time this doesn’t apply is for unregistered sole traders, trading under their own name. However, it’s still worth including because:
- in these internet rip-off times, it helps to prove your business is real
- search engines use it, among other things, to decide your site’s “authority”, so it affects your position in search results
- business directories, a useful SEO tool, use it to qualify their listings and some won’t list you without it
Moreover, it’s very easy to do with BlueTree CMS – and to protect that important data from web crawlers that generate spam.
BlueTree CMS has a spider-proof, “Business Information Block” feature that handles your name, address, and phone number.
NAT Tips
Get this right at the start and you won’t find that, later on, you have a big review exercise that you’ll never start because it’s too big and too boring.
- always use your full trading name, including the “Ltd” bit
- make sure your information is consistent everywhere on the internet
You may not be too worried now, but at some time you’ll see competitors above you in search results. If you don’t get all this right, search engines may penalise your website, or maybe not display it at all.
- Domain Registration: search engines check the Business Information on your website against that of the “Registrant” in your “whois” data
- Business Directories: search engines check against other sources, too, including directories like Yell, Thompson Local, and 181
- Correct Business Information: a search engine may prefer to display your business information, perhaps wrongly, from its favourite directory if the version on your website is different
Web Crawlers and Spam
Whilst it’s largely irritating, not dangerous, spam is a big time-waster. Worst case, someone may use it to steal your business identity.
Don’t just type your Business Information into your web pages. Make sure your CMS protects it from “spiders”, the computer programs hackers write to crawl the web and collect such information.
How to Spider-Proof Your Business Information
First enter your NAT, just once, in the Sitewide Settings panel.
The CMS will use the data to display your pretty Business Information Block, like the one at the top of this post. It contains:
- the trading name
- your address
- your phone number: click to dial on a smartphone
- your email address: click to open a new mail with your address in the “To” field
- optionally, a thumbnail Google map, centred on your postcode, which opens full size in new window, when clicked
You need only display your full Business Information in one place, but you may want to put NAT, in whole or in part, on several pages, to make it easy for customers to get in touch with you. You can include this block, as many times as you want, anywhere on your website, by typing,
—-Contact—-
on a separate line, just like that, with no other characters.
And, anywhere on your website, even within a paragraph, if you type that same telephone number with no spaces, BlueTree CMS will convert it to a clickable link, hidden from web crawlers. It will do the same with your email address.
Your Business Information Is Safe
Whilst humans will be able to read your Business Information, web crawling software will not. There’s more than one benefit:
- less spam and fewer time-wasting phone calls
- the information is consistent across your whole website
- if it ever changes, update it only once and all your pages change immediately
What to Do Next
Disclaimer: We are not lawyers. We offer the information on this page in good faith but please don’t rely on it. Take legal advice.
1. Establish Requirements for Your Type of Business
Registered businesses must display more than this basic information. The requirement for partnerships is different from that for limited companies, for example. Search for a phrase containing your registration type, e.g.
website business information required for [registration type] site:gov.uk
The “site:gov.uk” parameter will ensure you see results from the UK Government (apart from the ads), just to be on the safe side. If you omit it you’ll see results from solicitor websites, too, which is fine but maybe not definitive.
2. Check Your Domain Business Information
Often forgotten, your domain registrar holds a copy of your Business Information. Check yours by typing your web address into this page at whois.com. The registrant (hopefully you) is able to change this if it’s wrong.
3. Check Your Business Information Elsewhere
This is the subject of our second post in this series. If you’d like a notification when it’s published, please sign up using the “Find this useful?” button, bottom right.
