Case Study·SEO · D2C · Food Brand

How Sweetify became the Google answer for sugar free Indian sweets

Topic research, recipe content, recipe code for Google, page improvements, and technical fixes. All numbers come from Google Search Console and cover 16 months of data.

Client · Sweetify
Industry · Natural stevia sweeteners, D2C
Period · 16 months, July 2026
286
Page 1 keywords
excluding the brand name
46
Top 3 rankings
in the niche
881
Clicks from recipe photo cards
from 158K appearances
54%
Of all clicks from recipes
43 pages, 1,726 clicks
In this study
The problem
What we did
The results in detail
Why it worked
Services used
SEO Content
On Page SEO
Technical SEO
Answer Engine Optimization

About the client

Sweetify is an Indian brand that makes zero calorie sweeteners from natural stevia leaves. Its customers are people with diabetes and health conscious families who do not want to give up traditional sweets. The idea behind the brand is simple: mithai and health can go together.

The problem

For a young brand, fighting big companies head on for searches like “stevia” or “sugar free sweetener” is a losing first move. Sweetify needed a way into Google that matches how its real customers think. Buyers do not start with the product, they start with a craving: “sugar free milk cake recipe”, “diabetic friendly besan ladoo”, “gajar halwa without sugar”.

Recipe searches are crowded: Google fills them with photo cards, image strips, and now AI answers. A plain text link gets lost there. And the audience is on phones, all over the world: India first, then the US, UK, Canada and Australia.

What we did

1
Owned a niche, not a keyword
Mapped every sugar free and diabetic friendly Indian sweet people search for, then covered the whole list. You become the answer by covering all of it.
2
A recipe library built for today’s Google
43 recipe pages, each answering the search fully, with code that lets Google show it as a photo card. Every recipe leads to the product.
54% of all clicks come from recipes
3
Recipe code as a visibility multiplier
Earned placements in Google’s recipe photo galleries, the image led results that appear above plain links.
158K appearances · 881 clicks from photo cards
4
Kept the foundation strong
Site health, titles matched to real searches, and recipe to product links so earned trust flows to the pages that sell.
Homepage ranks at spot 5.8

Google Search Console performance report for Sweetify

Google Search Console, 16 months of data.

Sweetify is the answer for its niche

SearchAverage spot
diabetic milk cake2.0
sugar free milk cake recipe2.8
sugar free puran poli4.7
sugar free mysore pak recipe5.3
sugar free besan ladoo recipe5.4
sugar free shrikhand5.6
sugar free kalakand recipe6.4
sugar free coconut barfi6.6

286 different searches now show Sweetify on page 1, and 46 in the top 3. Over 16 months, the site’s average monthly spot improved from around 25 in the early months to around 10 to 14 today. In plain words, the site moved from page 2 and 3 of Google onto page 1 across the board. Even for the big search “stevia”, Sweetify now shows at spot 11, with 49 thousand appearances and climbing.

The photo cards do the heavy lifting

In recipe results, where plain links get pushed down by pictures and AI answers, Sweetify shows up as rich photo cards. Those placements produced 881 clicks from 158 thousand appearances. For food brands, this is the smart defense in the age of AI search: content that is clearly structured is exactly what both Google’s photo cards and AI assistants pick up and show.

Recipes that travel the world

Beyond 2,122 clicks in India, Sweetify earned 468 clicks in the United States, 134 in the UK, 106 in Canada and 75 in Australia. That is the global Indian audience craving festival sweets that fit modern health goals. On phones, where 81% of all clicks happen, the site averages spot 10.

An honest note about traffic in this niche

Recipe traffic rises and falls with the festival calendar, and Google’s AI answers now handle many recipe questions without anyone clicking. That is exactly why this project focused on things that last: top 3 rankings, photo card placements, and complete coverage of the niche. Those are what keep a brand visible, and quoted, no matter how the results page changes.

Why it worked

Covering a whole niche beats chasing keywords. By covering every sugar free mithai, Sweetify became the obvious answer, and Google rewards the obvious answer.
Content sells when it meets a craving. A person searching “sugar free milk cake recipe” is Sweetify’s exact customer at their exact moment of need. Every recipe is a gentle product pitch.
The recipe code is strategy, not decoration. It turned plain listings into photo cards, and earned 158 thousand appearances a plain page would never get.
Build for where search is going. Trust, structure and top 3 spots are what AI era search rewards. Traffic goes up and down. Being the answer lasts.

Want to own your niche?

We help consumer brands become the answer Google gives in their category. If your customers are searching for what you sell and finding someone else, we should talk.

Get my free SEO analysis