Starting your own business is no small feat.

And when you’re the one paving the way for an untapped opportunity in your market, you’ve got to be at the top of your game.

Enter safeintheseat.com.

This website’s success story pivots around a first-time mother’s journey to fill a gap in the car seat safety industry. Her website’s traffic is exploding this year, with a 343% growth in just 6 months.

We’re here to tell you how she did it and tips for your website.

Let’s get started.

About Safe in the Seat

Safe in the Seat is a go-to source for all things related to child car seat safety. The company was founded by Michelle Pratt in 2018.

As a new mom, she was overwhelmed with the car seat buying and installation process.

She discovered an alarming lack of resources and was determined to put her child’s safety in her own hands.

So, she became a nationally certified Child Passenger Safety Technician (CPST).

Feeling empowered by her own journey, Pratt set off to share child safety seat knowledge with the greater parental and caretaker community.

And so began Safe in the Seat.

Safeintheseat.com is a comprehensive learning resource for child car seat safety.

It offers a variety of resources and services, including car seat buying kits, online education courses, and 1:1 consultations.

Safe in the Seat equips caretakers with the knowledge and confidence to travel safely with their most precious cargo.

Historical Performance

Even though Safe in the Seat was founded in 2018, Semrush didn’t show any activity until December 2019. And then, it was a mere 3 visits.

However, over the next few years, there was a gradual growth until 2023’s explosion in organic traffic.

Most notably, we see the greatest growth in the past 6 months.

So, what happened between February and August of 2023 to put Safe in the Seat on the map (or, more fittingly, the search engine results page (SERP))?

We’re going to reveal that next.

The Catalyst: How Safe in the Seat Achieved 362% Organic Traffic Growth in 6 Months

Safe in the Seat grew organic traffic by performing the following:

1. Creating helpful, people-first content
2. Embodying Google E-E-A-T
3. Implementing schema markup
4. Acquiring more backlinks

Let’s look at each item in detail to understand its significance and how it impacted Safe in the Seat’s success.

1. Creating Helpful, People-First Content

As more and more companies turn to faster, automated content production to boost their rankings, Safe in the Seat took the slow and steady approach in 2023.

Here, we break down the number of pages on the site each month and the corresponding traffic for the United States, its top traffic-generating country:

Over these 6 months, Safe in the Seat published almost double the number of pages it had in February. A feasible number that allows high-quality content to shine.

Each blog is relatable, friendly, and very real. No AI-generated content is to be found here.

One new category that appeared this year was reviews.

Safe in the Seat debuted this Car Seat Reviews category in April and continued publishing them over the next few months. Each piece speaks directly to the reader and aims to assist their car seat buying journey.

Here is an example of one way Safe in the Seat uses a checklist to help its customers decide if a car seat meets their needs:

Why this matters:

Rather than opting for AI content generation, Safe in the Seat upholds a people-first approach with real reviews from real experiences. Pratt has been vocal about the importance of transparency and authenticity as a business owner, and her content reflects it.

Website owners can learn a valuable lesson from these reviews: write for people first and aim to deliver value. This will set your content apart and foster a loyal audience for long-term success.

How to write people-first content:

Writing for people first, bots second has been a long-time cornerstone of high-quality content. However, with Google’s 2023 helpful content update, it is now more important than ever.

Here are 5 tips for writing people-first content:

1. Stick to your niche. Is this topic relevant to my niche? Does it make sense and fit in with the other content on my site?
2. Understand your audience. What are their needs and wants? What are they trying to achieve?
3. Fulfill user intent. Am I actually answering the user’s question? Or will they need to do another Google search?
4. Make your content easy to understand. Is the information easy to scan and digest?
5. Show empathy or share personal stories. Does this content foster a genuine connection with my audience?

Tools for writing people-first content:

Crafting content for people first depends on your niche, but there are tools for optimizing your content for your audience.

All in One SEO (AIOSEO) makes it easy to understand your content’s readability—an important component of a positive user experience. Our TruSEO tool examines your content and offers a checklist of items to enhance its clarity and user-friendliness.

Here’s an example of approved items and ones that need improvement:

Now that we understand how Safe in the Seat writes for its audience first, let’s look at how it upholds E-E-A-T principles.

2. Embodying Google E-E-A-T

One of the standout features of Safe in the Seat is its embodiment of Google’s E-E-A-T principles: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

For example, as we learned earlier, Safe in the Seat’s founder is a nationally certified Child Passenger Safety Technician (CPST).

And you can tell by reading her content. It’s detailed and sounds natural.

It’s easy for her to speak as an expert because she is one.

This expertise is true for her team, too.

One member is also a CPST, reinforcing the depth of knowledge within the team.

The third member brings their expertise as a car seat expert and postpartum nurse, rounding out the team’s qualifications.

Why this matters:

Websites that demonstrate high expertise, backed by credentials and qualifications, are more likely to be seen as authoritative sources in their respective fields. Safe in the Seat’s commitment to E-E-A-T principles aligns perfectly with ranking criteria and, more importantly, delivers valuable information to its audience and earns their trust.

How to demonstrate E-E-A-T on your site:

It depends on your field, but here are a few Safe in the Seat tactics that work well for businesses of all kinds:

1. Create high-quality content.
2. Feature Team Member Bios that speak to credentials (can be professional and/or personal).
3. Add real photos (of you, your team, and in Safe in the Seat’s case, action shots of the car seat reviews).
4. Build authoritative backlinks.
5. Grow your social media presence. (Safe in the Seat has 730K Instagram followers).

We also recommend reading this Google E-E-A-T article for even more optimization ideas.

Tools for demonstrating Google E-E-A-T:

E-E-A-T aims to weed out inferior content so Google can serve high-quality results that enhance the search experience.

This means writing quality content is at the core of E-E-A-T.

Our newest feature, TruSEO Highlighter, makes doing this easier than ever.

The TruSEO Highlighter shows you exactly where you need to make improvements.

It specifically looks for readability issues, which we showed earlier. These issues make it difficult for users (and bots) to understand your content.

In the screenshot below, TruSEO wants us to add more transition words, and the highlighter shows where to put them. It really is that simple.

Okay, so we now know Safe in the Seat excels at content creation, but what about the elements under the hood?

Let’s peek at its technical SEO next.

3. Implementing Schema Markup

As Safe in the Seat produced more content, they started ranking for more keywords.

Here, we see a progression and distribution of those rankings:

They also began to appear for more rich snippets with the help of schema markup.

Schema markup, or structured data, is code within the web page that communicates essential information about the page to search engines. Using it can help you win rich snippets on the SERP.

Rich snippets are enhanced search results that include additional information right on the SERP.

Here is an example of one:

Safe in the Seat uses various schema markup types on its site, which are proving effective.

Here we see its growth in SERP features (rich snippets and featured snippets) over the last few months:

Why this matters:

Rich results help you win more real estate on the SERP and get more eyes on your content. This is critical to improving key metrics, like clickthrough rate (CTR) and organic traffic.

By using schema markup, Safe in the Seat has grown its online visibility and captured more traffic for its site.

How to implement schema markup on your site:

This article shows three methods for adding schema markup to WordPress manually.

Each method involves a few steps and requires you to obtain and copy code snippets into the appropriate fields.

Tools for implementing schema markup:

An SEO plugin can implement schema markup for you, so you never have to touch code. AIOSEO’s Schema Generator makes structured data a breeze. Choose the schema type you want, and we’ll format it properly for search engines.

Here are the schema types available in AIOSEO:

Next, we’ll look at the final contributing factor to Safe in the Seat’s organic growth: backlinks.

4. Acquiring More Backlinks

Historically, the site’s backlinks were relatively low.

Then, in May 2023, we see the beginning of a positive shift.

Safe in the Seat appears to have focused on its backlinking efforts over the summer.

Particularly so in July, when we saw the addition of 2,397 new backlinks.

Overall, they have some impressive domains linking to them, including Forbes and NBC News.

Why this matters:

Backlinks are like votes of confidence in the eyes of search engines. They act like endorsements for your content, signaling its credibility. Backlinks are also in the top two Google ranking factors, making them a powerful focus for optimization efforts.

How to do link building on your site:

Quality over quantity is the cornerstone of successful backlinking. Getting a few backlinks from reputable sites is worth more than thousands from spam.

It’s also important to note that a comprehensive link-building strategy extends beyond backlinks. You should optimize for the following three types of links:

• Internal links (from one page on your site to another page on your site)
• Outbound links (from your site to another external site)
• Backlinks (from an external site to your site)

This link-building guide shares how to optimize for each.

Tools for link building:

AIOSEO’s Link Assistant helps you manage your link-building efforts. Generate reports to find and fix orphan pages, or check out the Overview tab to see your site’s link distribution.

Standout SEO Wins

Before we wrap up, there’s an additional SEO technique worth highlighting at safeintheseat.com:

1. They apply internal linking best practices.

Internal links are links between pages on your website, and they’re extremely important for SEO.

Search engines use internal links to crawl your site and understand its structure. They also signal which pages are the most important. Generally, the more internal links pointing to a page, the more important it is.

For Safe in the Seat, they apply the following best practices:

• Internal links are strategic and natural. Safe in the Seat ensures its site is interconnected by linking strategically across pages. This method helps users navigate the site easily and also helps Google index pages for the relevant keywords.
• Anchor text is optimized. Anchor text tells readers and bots what the link is about. You should optimize this text with keywords while keeping it relevant to the context.

Tool: Link Assistant can help you identify linking opportunities and optimize anchor text. This time-saving tool means you don’t have to scour your website for the right link or keywords.

Here’s an example of link suggestions and their corresponding anchor texts:

Takeaways

In our analysis of safeintheseat.com, we’ve uncovered the strategies that contributed to its remarkable growth in half a year.

Now, let’s review which best practices to apply to your website and which ones to reconsider.

Top 3 Strategies to Emulate

1. Write for people first, then search engines. Safe in the Seat demonstrates how content should be valuable and engaging to people first. By creating content that meets user intent and resonates with your audience, you’ll foster loyalty and authority in your niche.
2. Showcase E-E-A-T in your content. Safe in the Seat highlights its team’s experience and expertise. These qualities shine through content to build authority and trust. By incorporating E-E-A-T on your site, you can improve SEO performance and build stronger connections with your audience.
3. Use schema markup to win rich results on the SERP. While schema markup doesn’t guarantee a rich result, it increases your chances. By using structured data, you can win eye-catching real estate on the SERP and grow your clickthrough rate (CTR).

Bottom 3 Strategies to Reconsider

1. Not optimizing metadata for character limits. Safe in the Seat could fine-tune some metadata to fit within character limits. This enhancement maximizes the use of space while avoiding truncation on the SERP. A snippet preview tool can help you see how your metadata looks on the SERP before publishing.
2. Neglecting image SEO. Safe in the Seat currently overlooks some alt text and title tags for its images. Website owners should use both elements to adhere to image SEO best practices and help users and search engines understand visual aids. AIOSEO can help you optimize both image attributes.
3. Hiring a marketing agency. While analyzing safeintheseat.com, we discovered site credit to a marketing agency. This is not a negative point. Enlisting the services of an agency can be a powerful and strategic move for websites with ample resources.

However, it’s essential to recognize that achieving online success doesn’t always require hiring external professionals.

You can implement effective SEO and content strategies in-house.

And having the right tools can make all the difference.

In our following sections, we’ll introduce you to AIOSEO, the best WordPress SEO plugin to put your site on the SERP.

Steal Our SEO Winning Strategy: A Checklist for Your Website

Ready to boost your site’s rankings and win more traffic?

Our 50-item SEO checklist has everything you need to optimize for better visibility and more traffic. (We’ll also give you the resources and tools to get there.)

Win More Rich Results and Boost Rankings With AIOSEO

When time is money, an SEO WordPress plugin can streamline your efforts from manual work to efficient, automated optimizations.

All in One SEO allows you to focus on what truly matters—creating exceptional content and engaging your audience.

With over 3 million users and thousands of 5-star reviews, AIOSEO is changing how savvy website owners execute their SEO strategies. Our comprehensive tool kit and robust offering of add-ons allow you to customize your site’s SEO in a way that’s easy to understand and gets results.

Here are a few of our favorite features:

• TruSEO On-Page Analysis: Get an in-depth but easy-to-understand analysis of your optimization efforts. Each page includes an actionable checklist to help you maximize your content’s potential
• Rich Snippets Schema: Our Schema Generator offers various schema types to help you claim more rich results on the SERP. It’s as simple as choosing the schema you want; then, we’ll format the structured data for Google.
• Link Assistant: Apply internal linking best practices with easy linking suggestions and reports. These tools will help you boost content discovery and prevent orphan pages.
• Image SEO: Set automatic image alt text and title tags with a single click. You’ll save time from manual optimizations while helping users and search engines understand your images.
• AI Title & Description Generator: Our latest feature makes crafting metadata faster than ever. This innovative tool harnesses the power of AI to generate distinct and click-worthy metadata for every page on your website.
• Social Media Integration: Connect and share content across all your social media platforms. Some integrations include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and more.