Recumbent bikes are increasingly popular among cyclists of all ages. The unique design of these bikes makes for a comfortable, stable and speedy riding experience. For many riders, they provide a welcome and long sought after relief from the back, neck and shoulder pain that often goes hand in hand with riding a traditional bike.
Building the Best Recumbent Trike
The Catrike, a 3-wheeled recumbent bicycle, was conceived of by Brazilian engineer Paulo Camasmie back in 2000. Camasmie’s goal was to build the best recumbent tricycle and he is well on his way of realizing the dream! His invention has been awarded Trike of the Year six times by the readers of Bent Rider Online. Catrike was also chosen as Manufacturer of the Year by the Manufacturer Association of Central Florida in 2008 and 2009.
Catrike’s relatively small team creates and assembles all of the trikes at their 10,000 square foot warehouse and factory in Florida. The team, managed by the general manager Mark Egeland, has already made more than 2,300 tricycles and their business is growing steadily.
How Did Catrike Grow and Succeed?
We recently caught up with David Whitmer, Catrike’s sales and marketing manager. David created the Cartrike website on Wix back in 2013 and has been thrilled with the results. The company targets senior cyclists and outdoor enthusiasts and sets themselves apart from competitors because of the high quality of their product.
Three years after building their website, David said he is confident in his SEO abilities. Since David says he has “understood the value and importance of SEO for many years,” Catrike’s SEO success is that much more exciting. “We rank in the 1st position in Google search results for our most important keywords,” he told us proudly.
Meet Mark Egeland,
Cycling Enthusiast and SEO Hero
“We followed the Wix SEO recommendations to improve results and we rank in the top position in Google search results for our most important keywords!”
Another SEO Hero! How David Whitmer Rode
Catrike Into 1st Place
Catrike is dominating the SERP when it comes to relevant terms including recumbent trike, catrike and recumbent tricycle. Each of these terms receives a significant number of monthly searches and together they are bringing a lots of organic visitors to the website. Because the intent is so clear for these queries, many of these site visitors are converting into clients!
A Self-Taught SEO Hero
David manages all of Catrike’s SEO on his own. A self-taught SEO hero, he took advantage of Wix’s many SEO tools and tutorials to boost Catrike’s rankings. He conducted a thorough keyword research with help from Google AdWords and other online tools and choose several target keywords including recumbent trike, recumbent trikes, recumbent tricycle and Catrike expedition.
Once he chose his keywords, David then used many tools including the Wix SEO Wizard, Wix apps like Site Booster, the Wix mobile editor and more to optimize his website. He created SEO-friendly alt text for his images, added internal links on his pages and secured reviews about his business on other websites. Plus, David regularly adds new content to his site to keep his clientele informed about new Catrike models or to share stories from satisfied customers.
The Power of Organic Traffic
Each week, David checks his rankings using Google Analytics and Google Search Console. He is pleased to see that his SEO hero efforts are heeding fruitful results and told us that organic search is still the largest source of traffic to the website.
While the company has been around for 17 years, the website and David’s efforts have made an an enormous impact in increasing sales. As David told us, “Our website has been fundamental to growing our business.” In fact, unlike social media, which David feels is overhyped, he said that thanks to Wix’s SEO recommendations “we now rank in the top position in Google search results for our most important keywords!”
