The children’s furniture market is expected to reach $91.7 billion by 2032. And with rising demand, competition among big box names and small players intensifies.

In this SEO case study, we’ll look at how one boutique manufacturer leverages its website to get more eyes on its product.

Child Craft has been around since 1954, but it’s 2023 that’s making a mark in its online presence.

They’ve reached an impressive 261% year-over-year (YoY) growth, and we’re telling you exactly how they did it. Plus, giving you tips to replicate their growth on your website.

Let’s dive in.

About Child Craft

Child Craft is a children’s furniture manufacturer based in the USA. They were founded in 1954.

Child Craft is known for its nursery furnishings. They craft cribs, changing tables, glider rockers, and more.

Timeless designs and high-quality materials are at the core of each product.

Bedroom furniture is also available for toddlers and kids. Parents and caretakers can choose from bunk beds, tables, chairs, and other furnishings.

Child Craft is available to shop online from their website, childcraftbaby.com, and at the following retailers:

• Target
• Wayfair
• Wal-Mart
• Amazon
• And more

Historical Performance

Child Craft’s domain first appeared online in 2014.

For the first 5 years, monthly organic traffic stayed below 10K visits. They surpassed this milestone in December 2019.

2021 was one of their best-performing years, averaging 15.2K monthly visits.

Then, in 2023, Child Craft experienced its first real traffic spike.

The fall months set record-high traffic, with November boasting 46.3K organic visits.

This is more than 3.5X the traffic received the year prior.

So, what did Child Craft do differently in 2023 to set a new trajectory for its over 9-year online presence?

Let’s find out.

The Catalyst: How Child Craft Grew Traffic to 46K Monthly Visits

Childcraftbaby.com grew its organic traffic by performing the following:

1. Creating user-centric categories and SEO-friendly URLs
2. Capturing non-branded traffic with new keywords
3. Obtaining more backlinks

Let’s explore each strategy to learn how it contributed to Child Craft’s recent SEO success.

1. Creating User-Centric Categories and SEO-Friendly URLs

In November 2022, Child Craft revamped how users shop on the website.

Originally, the navigation bar displayed the following options:

• Shop By Product
• All Collections
• Guard & Bed Rails

This product-focused approach was transformed to be more user-focused in November.

Child Craft added four new categories:

• Baby
• Toddler & Kids
• About Us
• Support

The first two categories are where we are going to focus our attention.

Instead of focusing on the product, Child Craft guided consumers to shop by age group.

The Baby category is the most popular and takes the lion’s share of the site’s total traffic.

Here are some of this category’s top URLs:

In November 2023, the Shop By Baby and Shop By Toddlers & Kids categories generated 77% of all site traffic.

Why this matters:

This shift from product-centric to customer-centric proved pivotal to Child Craft’s online success.

SEO-friendly URLs not only deliver a seamless shopping experience for users but also provide search engines with more context regarding the site’s structure.

Both parties can understand the site’s content more easily and see how it interconnects under this new organization. And when search engines better understand your site and its content, the better your chances are of ranking.

How to create SEO-friendly permalinks on your site:

An SEO-friendly URL should include your primary keyword and tell what your page is about.

As we saw with Child Craft’s URLs, it’s also important to consider how it helps orient users and search engines within the site’s hierarchy.

Here are some additional items to consider:

• Do not include years or dates.
• Use hyphens instead of underscores.
• Use HTTP-secured URLs.

For further reading, this article shows you exactly how to create SEO-friendly URLs.

Tools for optimizing your URLs for SEO:

When you’re running your own website, it’s easy for URL optimizations to slip through the cracks.

But with the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin, you never have to worry about missing an SEO-friendly URL again.

TruSEO checks your content for important SEO and content optimizations, including URLs.

Below is an example of the Focus Keyphrase Checklist with an unoptimized permalink, which is your signal to add your primary keyword to the URL.

2. Capturing Non-Branded Traffic With New Keywords

Moving away from product-only-focused optimizations significantly impacted the website’s keyword targets and rankings.

Naturally, these new category pages required “generic” keyword optimizations for their copy.

These are called non-branded keywords, meaning they do not include “child craft” or any of its variations.

For example, this collection page for Baby Cribs is optimized for non-branded keywords, like:

• baby cribs
• best baby cribs

(It also includes optimizations for “child craft baby cribs,” which is a branded keyword.)

Before these pages were introduced to the site, 72% of Child Craft’s rankings were branded keywords. This means most keywords had “child craft” in it.

Here were the top-ranking keywords in November 2022:

However, after the addition of these new categories, we see how branded traffic declined over the following months.

Conversely, non-branded traffic went up.

At the end of 2023, 95% of traffic is non-branded. The chart below demonstrates this hand-off.

And here, we can see how November 2023’s keywords reflect a mix of non-branded and branded keywords:

Why this matters:

Branded keywords are powerful when you already have a strong online presence and high brand awareness.

With that said, they’re limited to the audience that already knows you.

That’s why it’s important to also optimize for non-branded keywords.

This type of keyword has a more extensive reach, allowing you to connect with a broader audience. Using them can be an effective way to introduce your product to new customers and boost brand awareness.

How to optimize for non-branded keywords on your site:

Identifying the right non-branded keywords for your site comes down to keyword research.

Keyword research helps you find which words to target and optimize for in your content.

This tutorial gives you a comprehensive look at how to perform keyword research using popular SEO tools.

As for identifying non-branded terms, it’s straightforward. If the keyword does not have a brand attached to it, you’re good to go!

Tools for keyword research:

Did you know you can do keyword research in WordPress?

AIOSEO makes this possible with its Keyphrase Suggestions tool. This unique feature connects with your Semrush account to provide you with keyword ideas directly in the editor.

Here’s an example of some suggestions for a polo match blog:

If you proceed with a keyword, simply click Add Keyphrase. The TruSEO tool will then analyze your content optimizations for the new keyword.

Now, let’s look at the final contributing factor to Child Craft’s organic growth: backlinks.

3. Obtaining More Backlinks

In the fall of 2023, Child Craft experienced an influx of new backlinks.

It bears a striking resemblance to the rise in organic traffic, as demonstrated below.

While any theories regarding how these backlinks were acquired would be purely speculative, the influence of backlinks on traffic growth is undeniable.

Why this matters:

Backlinks act like votes of confidence for your website. They tell search engines that your content is reliable and trustworthy.

They’re also among the top two Google ranking factors, making them vital to growing your online presence.

How to do link building on your site:

This backlinking guide explains how to find and obtain high-quality backlinks. It takes a quality-over-quantity approach and highlights the importance of relevancy.

It’s also worth noting that a robust linking strategy doesn’t stop at backlinks.

You should also optimize for the following links:

• Internal links (from one page on your domain to another page on your domain)
• Outbound links (from your domain to another domain)

This guide to link building has everything you need to know to optimize for all three types of links.

Tools for link building:

Link Assistant can help you locate and add internal links in a single click. With link suggestions that populate directly in the WordPress editor, it’s as easy as clicking Add Link.

Standout SEO Wins

Before we wrap up, there’s an additional SEO technique we’d like to highlight at childcraftbaby.com.

1. They use FAQs to improve the user experience and win SERP features.

Child Craft strategically sprinkles FAQs throughout the site.

FAQs are a valuable tool for users and search engines.

For users, FAQs provide easy access to helpful information. They can be particularly impactful when used on eCommerce sites to alleviate customer concerns.

From a search engine perspective, FAQs can improve online visibility with SERP features. Search engines often use FAQs to generate featured snippets and People Also Ask (PAA) results.

Both these results have higher clickthrough rates (CTR) and drive more traffic.

Here’s one example of how Child Craft uses FAQs on a product listing page:

Tool: FAQ schema is a must-have when optimizing for SERP features. It signals to search engines that you’re answering a question, which can then be used as a rich result on the SERP.

Schema markup occurs in the backend of your website and typically requires coding. But with our FAQ blocks, you can write your FAQs directly in the WordPress editor.

Then, we’ll implement the FAQ schema for you.

Here’s how to locate the AIOSEO FAQ block in WordPress:

And how it looks once you’re ready to write:

Takeaways

In our analysis of childcraftbaby.com, we’ve uncovered the SEO strategies behind their recent success.

Now, let’s recap which ones to implement on your website and others to reconsider.

Top 3 Strategies to Emulate

1. Optimize URLs for users and search engines. Child Craft updated its site navigation with SEO-friendly categories and URLs. This small but significant change helps users and search engines understand the site hierarchy and content more easily.
2. Target non-branded keywords alongside branded traffic. You can diversify your traffic by targeting non-branded keywords related to your products or services. This approach helps you capture a broader audience and increase visibility in search results.
3. Build more backlinks. Backlinks are one of the most important Google ranking factors. You can rank higher and win more traffic by cultivating a robust and credible backlink profile.

Bottom 3 Strategies to Reconsider

1. Using non-descriptive subheadings. At times, Child Craft optimizes subheadings for aesthetics instead of SEO. For example, H2s like “imaginations will blossom” and “memories will grow” don’t tell search engines much about the page. Instead, use SEO-friendly subheadings to help users and search engines understand your content. TruSEO helps you with this task by checking your subheadings for your focus keyphrase.
2. Overlooking the importance of meta descriptions. Some of Child Craft’s meta descriptions are non-descriptive or too short. For example, the baby nursery collection only says “baby nursery furniture.” Meta descriptions are unique opportunities to capture your audience’s attention—and clicks. Take the time to craft compelling meta descriptions to entice customers to visit your page. You can also use an AI meta description generator to write them for you.
3. Neglecting image title tags. Image SEO best practices call for alt text and title tags. And while Child Craft caters to the former, they miss out on the latter. AIOSEO has an image SEO feature that can populate image alt text and title tags automatically.

Steal Our SEO Winning Strategy: A Checklist for Your Website

Are you ready to bring your website into its next stage of organic growth?

This SEO Checklist has the steps to get you there.

Grow Your Rankings and Organic Traffic With AIOSEO

What if you could skip the guesswork and enjoy a direct route to a winning SEO strategy?

You can do just that with the help of All in One SEO.

AIOSEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market. And you don’t have to just take our word for it. With thousands of 5-star reviews and over 3 million users, you’ll be in good hands as you take on the SERP.

Here are some of our favorite features:

• TruSEO On-Page Analysis: Get a snapshot view, or go into detail, of your content’s on-page SEO with a dynamic TruSEO Score. We’ll let you know where you’re on target and give you actionable items to hit the bullseye.
• Semrush Keyphrase Suggestions: Find new keywords without ever having to leave WordPress. AIOSEO pulls keyphrase suggestions from Semrush and serves them to you directly in the WordPress editor.
• Link Assistant: Get link suggestions, edit anchor text, and add internal links to your content in just 1 click. Link Assistant makes your internal linking strategy more effective than ever.
• Rich Snippets Schema: AIOSEO offers various schema markup options 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.
• AI Title & Description Generator: This innovative feature makes crafting metadata faster than ever. It uses AI to generate distinct and highly clickable metadata for any page on your website.
• Image SEO: Turn on automatic image alt text and title attributes with just 1 click. You’ll save time from manual entries while helping users and search engines understand your images.