Author: Daniel Zimmerman Feb 10, 2022 3 Min READ

Using Business Reviews for Local SEO as a 3PL

3 Min READ
Using Business Reviews for Local SEO as a 3PL

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How to Collect Reviews and Grow Business as a Result

Ranking as a top result in a Google search is a great way to gain new business, especially for warehouses that are planning for growth. But even after last year’s SEO discussion for 3PL Warehouses, some of you may have noticed some difficulty with the process of implementing these strategies. Ranking across the entire nation for “3PL warehouse” is an incredibly difficult feat considering there are thousands of third-party logistics (3PL) warehouses and only ten spots on the first page of Google.

But what if you didn’t have to target and rank in the whole nation? What if you just needed to rank in a certain section, like a region or city? Suddenly the idea of ranking becomes easier and less daunting of a task. One of the best ways to do this is by getting reviews for your business to boost local SEO.

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Local SEO Overview

Before we get to collecting reviews, let’s cover the basics. What is Local SEO? At a high level, local SEO just describes the process of developing a website or business so that a search engine can more easily crawl and index it for a specific area. If you’ve ever searched for warehouses in Atlanta, the businesses recommended are a result of local SEO. If you’ve ever searched for “ice cream near me,” that too is local SEO.

Fun fact, the number of people searching “X business near me” grew by over 100% in 2021. This means there is a huge opportunity to develop your online presence to be found by people and businesses close by looking for warehousing services that you can provide. Many brands want to make sure their logistics partner is local to them and their customers. This is especially true of ecommerce brands that are looking to ship goods to their customers as soon as possible. They rely on local SEO to show them the businesses in the area of their customers to get their goods to the end consumer as quickly as possible.

So how can your 3PL be found when someone is searching for 3PLs in Minneapolis? That’s where reviews come into play.

Google My Business Reviews

Reviews online, especially those from Google My Business, can be huge proponents to how well a business ranks in a search engine like Google. The main idea of any search engine is to find the best answer to a given question. If someone is looking for a business in a city, they obviously don’t want to see the businesses with poor reviews. Going back to my ice cream example, when looking at the results, you see it’s mostly 4.5-star reviews and above. But there is a balance between rating score and number of reviews. There are times when the number of reviews outweighs the higher score, just because it’s seen as a more reliable metric.

For 3PLs this means you must get reviews from multiple customers and try to be seen as reliable as possible. The best times to ask for reviews from your customers occur during two periods of your relationship:

  1. When things are going smoothly, and you’ve consistently performed good work in delivering the goods for your customer.
  2. Right after they have a crisis where you manage to be hero for your customer by fixing it with your great logistical speed from an awesome warehouse management system (WMS).

Try to reach out during these two time periods to get reviews for your warehouse and see if they can get a few more positive reviews to raise your overall rating. This will help greatly when looking at the local pack of search results in your given area.

Discover the latest trends in third-party logistics through Extensiv’s lens –  stay ahead of the curve in 2024 with our best practice recommendations.

Other Review sites

Now while Google is a huge factor for ranking in the Google search engine, it’s not the only ranking factor. Websites like Yelp, more industry specific review sites, or even reviews on your own website can all be scrubbed and indexed by a search engine for the purpose of determining the quality of the business to show in the local ranking results page. While these reviews won’t show up in the star rating on the results page (those only come from the Google My Business reviews), they are still subtle indicators that a search engine like Google will see.

It is important to have reviews from other sources for a diversified portfolio of goodwill spreading online about your warehouse. This will help boost your business’ authority online in authenticating the validity of the reviews claims and can be helpful trust builders to potential partners.

Collecting reviews for these websites should also be conducted on a regular basis, but more so after obtaining a fair stable of reviews on Google.

Local SEO as a 3PL Conclusion

At the end of the day, local SEO is just about helping the people near you find you and your warehouse’s services. To do that, you should be trusted by the community you live in with the positive reviews that come from your current customers. Many potential warehousing customers want to be able to see the location of their logistics partner and will look for businesses near them. So, collecting these reviews will allow your warehouse to rank in local packs when people search for third party logistics in your city.

Reviews should definitely be at the top of mind as a growth trend to capitalize on in 2022. If your warehouse is looking for other trends to capitalize on this year, check out our fifth annual State of the Third-Party Logistics Industry Report to see what disruptions lurk on the horizon for our industry and how to come out the other side with greater growth and profit.

Written By:
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Daniel Zimmerman

Daniel is an experienced digital marketer, having formerly worked for some of the biggest digital marketing agencies in Southern California. Now tackling the logistics industry, he specializes in utilizing the right medium to find and show customers WMS solutions to pain points they face every day.

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