Case study at a glance
From a cluttered, slow-loading website to stronger search visibility. In five months, The Wise Idiot improved an organic food brand’s average Google position from 9.2 to 6.4, optimised 110+ product pages and achieved a 100/100 Ahrefs AI Discoverability score.
The client is an Indian organic food and staples brand offering products across edible oils, grains, millets, pulses, spices, dry fruits, superfoods and sweeteners.
Their website faced several challenges that limited its organic search potential. Broken internal links, inconsistent URLs, a sitemap that included non-content pages, and slow-loading, image-heavy pages weakened the site’s technical foundation. Product pages also needed richer content, while the website’s category structure needed to reflect the brand’s current catalogue.
The Wise Idiot was brought in to strengthen the website’s technical SEO, improve search visibility and build a comprehensive content foundation across product categories. The engagement also focused on developing useful, question-led content to support discovery through traditional search engines and emerging AI-powered search experiences.
Before the engagement, these were the main issues holding the website back in search:
Search for organic food is research-led. Shoppers look up health benefits, compare staples (jaggery or sugar, ghee or oil), and check what suits fasting, diets and daily cooking before they choose a brand. More of these questions now go to AI assistants instead of a list of links.
We started with a full technical audit and keyword research. Rather than adding content to a site search engines struggled to read, we fixed crawling, indexing and page speed first, so every page written afterwards could rank.
We planned content category by category, aligned to the brand’s new brochure: edible oils and grains, millets, pulses and beans, spices and masalas, dry fruits and superfoods, sweeteners, and value-added grocery. Each product page was written for shoppers and search engines alike.
The blog was built around the questions shoppers actually ask, from the health benefits of mustard oil to jaggery vs sugar and ghee vs oil. These comparison and benefit queries are the ones AI assistants answer directly.
We wrote replies to two years of Google reviews and rebuilt the Home, About Us and Legal pages, giving both shoppers and search engines clear proof of who the brand is.
In the first phase (June to October 2026), the brand moved well inside page one for its tracked searches, while its site health and AI discoverability improved alongside rankings.
Places higher on Google (9.2 → 6.4)
Weekly search impressions
AI Discoverability score
Ahrefs Site Health score
Average position improved from 9.2 to 6.4, with a best week of 6.0. The brand now sits well inside page one for its tracked searches.
Weekly impressions grew from 6,270 to 11,900, their highest level in the period, after a jump across the final two weeks.
The Ahrefs Site Audit score more than doubled after the sitemap rebuild, and has held between 73 and 82 since.
Ahrefs confirms that AI crawlers, including those used by ChatGPT and Gemini, have full access to the site’s pages.
Slow-loading desktop pages dropped from 160 to 1, and slow mobile pages fell by a third, from 163 to 110.
2.8 places higher · monthly average · lower position = higher on the page
With rankings and visibility up, the next phase turns that position into more visits:
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We fixed the website’s technical SEO (109 broken internal links, canonical errors and an overloaded sitemap), compressed and added alt text to 1,000 images, wrote meta titles and descriptions for every core, category and product page, wrote new content for 110+ products, and launched a question-led blog designed for AI-powered search.
Within the first phase, from June to October 2026. Over those five months, the average Google position improved from 9.2 to 6.4, weekly search impressions grew 90% from 6,270 to 11,900, and the Ahrefs Site Health score rose from 37 to 77.
AEO (answer engine optimisation) means structuring content so AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Gemini can find, read and quote it. Organic food search is research-led: shoppers ask about health benefits and compare staples like jaggery vs sugar or ghee vs oil, and more of these questions now go to AI assistants instead of a list of links.
Adding content to a site that search engines struggle to read limits its impact. Fixing crawling, indexing and page speed first meant every page written afterwards had a fair chance to rank.
High-resolution 2,560 × 2,560 pixel images and unused demo images were the main causes. After compressing 1,000 images and removing 650 demo images, slow-loading desktop pages dropped from 160 to 1, and slow mobile pages fell from 163 to 110.
