284% Organic Growth and 3x Audience Reach in 6 Months

Brand category: Grocery & Gourmet Food

Client overview

Pono Hawaiian Foods is a specialty brand bringing the vibrant, authentic flavors of Hawaii to consumers through its signature products like nori komi furikake, island yuzu furikake, and premium Hawaiian seasonings. Guided by the Aloha Spirit, the brand aims to deliver the finest island-style flavors in a Pono (righteous) way, offering quality, culture, and tradition in every product. Their goal is to make Hawaiian flavors more accessible while growing their online presence and strengthening organic visibility.

The challenge

Before partnering with eStore Factory, Pono Hawaiian Foods faced several digital challenges:

• Low organic visibility despite strong product quality.

• Weak keyword rankings, with most high-intent terms buried deep in search results.

• High bounce rate (36.12%), indicating poor user engagement.

• Minimal organic traffic, with only 112 monthly users from search in March 2025.

• Unoptimized metadata makes it difficult for Google to understand page relevance.

• No content strategy to build topical authority or brand search demand.

The brand needed a structured, full-funnel SEO approach that could scale traffic, improve keyword positions, and build long-term organic performance.

Our goals

Our SEO experts built a strategy around four clear, outcome-driven objectives designed to strengthen brand search performance:

• Drive a steady increase in organic traffic by fixing core on-page signals and aligning content with high-intent search queries.

• Improve keyword rankings for product, brand, and category terms to bring more qualified users to the website.

• Lower the bounce rate by improving content clarity, page structure, and overall user experience.

• Boost search visibility through optimized metadata, refined page relevance, and a focused keyword-mapping approach.

Our solutions

1. Updated metadata

We began by strengthening the foundation of the website so Google could correctly understand and rank each page. This included rewriting all titles, descriptions, and meta tags using high-intent Hawaiian seasoning keywords, fixing duplicate metadata, and ensuring clear page-level relevance. 

2. Focused on keyword mapping

We implemented a focused keyword strategy by mapping brand terms to core pages, assigning high-volume furikake keywords to product listings, and using long-tail seasoning terms across blogs and category pages. This prevented keyword overlap and created a clean structure that supported consistent ranking improvements.

3. Build SEO-focused content

To build topical relevance, we published SEO-optimized blogs targeting long-tail searches related to furikake flavors, Hawaiian cuisine, and seasoning usage. These were internally linked to product pages to pass authority and help the site rank for wider keyword clusters.

4. Internal linking improvements

We strengthened the internal linking structure by connecting product pages, blogs, and category pages more strategically. This helped users discover more products, improved page navigation, and passed authority across key URLs, directly supporting higher session numbers and improved page engagement.

5. Improved user experience 

We optimized landing pages for better UX, updated older content to match keyword intent, and conducted weekly ranking checks to refine meta tags and internal links. This improved user engagement and helped reduce bounce rate. We also refreshed every product page with structured, keyword-rich content that explained ingredients, flavor profiles, and Hawaiian origin details. 

Results 

In the last six months, Pono Hawaiian Foods has seen great, measurable improvements in its SEO performance.

Keyword ranking improvements

Our SEO strategy delivered strong visibility gains, with multiple high-intent keywords entering the top 10 positions on Google. These rankings played a direct role in the surge of organic traffic and higher-quality user engagement.

Securing top-10 positions for high-volume and niche Hawaiian seasoning terms significantly boosted search visibility, bringing more qualified users to the website and accelerating overall organic growth.

Client feedback

“Our experience with the eStore Factory has been incredibly positive. Our visibility improved, our best-selling furikake products started ranking in the top positions, and organic traffic grew far beyond expectations. The refined content, clear keyword structure, and continuous optimizations helped customers find us easily, boosting engagement and giving our Hawaiian seasoning range strong, sustainable momentum.”