Lots of SEO advice you’ll find online is vague and doesn’t make sense.

You’ll read things like:

“Just publish fresh content.”
“Rank for more keywords.”
“Use AI to create blog posts at scale.”

But if you’re wanting to try and get more leads or sales, none of that matters unless it leads to meaningful traffic. The kind of traffic that’s actually looking to buy, book, or enquire.

This article walks through what real SEO success looks like, based on years of hands-on work with clients. We’ll show graphs, explain strategies, and contrast effective SEO with the stuff that sounds good in a proposal but delivers nothing in reality. For example, the below graphs look great, right? Those clearly show traffic increasing and keywords increasing. That’s good, right? Well, technically yes, but let’s dig a little deeper and see what real SEO success actually looks like.

Whether you’ve never done SEO before or you’ve been burned by it in the past, this will give you a clearer picture of how it actually works and what you should expect if it’s done properly.

With that being said, before we get into it, I would just like to say that SEO is never guaranteed to get you results. It’s a spectrum, just like most forms of advertising. You can run a good campaign or a bad one; however, you can ensure that you’re doing the best you can given your expectations and budget.

The Illusion of SEO Success

A lot of SEO reports and sales decks look great on paper. You’ll get a ranking chart showing dozens of keywords. You might see graphs that look like traffic is increasing. Sometimes, you’ll be told your site is “fully optimised” after a few weeks of work.

What people think SEO success looks like:

• Ranking first for your business name (you probably already do)
• A blog that’s updated once a month, regardless of quality
• Reports showing 50+ keywords (most of them irrelevant or barely searched)
• Mass-producing blog content using AI tools, hoping quantity wins

This kind of SEO is all surface-level. It looks impressive but rarely leads to business growth.

If no one is searching for the keywords you rank for, or if your blog traffic isn’t converting, then you’re just adding noise. Google isn’t looking for content volume. It’s looking for value. And users are too.

What SEO Success Actually Looks Like

When SEO works, you know it. Not because of vanity metrics, but because real things happen:

• More people visit your website from Google organically
• That traffic comes from people searching for things you offer
• Leads or sales increase as a result
• You show up for relevant, unbranded, commercial-intent keywords
• You start seeing multiple entry points to your site. Blogs, service pages, location-based searches, FAQs

Moz has a great breakdown of how to measure SEO success if you want a more detailed guide on technical tracking here.

Let’s look at two real examples from our own clients at dotMD.

Future Form: From 100 to 1,200 Monthly Organic Visitors

Future Form is one of Australia’s leading formwork companies. But three years ago, they were almost invisible online. Despite delivering major commercial projects, their site had minimal traffic and didn’t show up for any meaningful search terms.

We partnered with them on a long-term SEO strategy.

The outcome:

• Grew organic Australian traffic from around 100 per month to 1,200+ per month
• Over 2,500 monthly visitors globally
• Now ranking on the first page for major terms like:
  • “formworker”
  • “formwork contractor”
  • “concrete formwork”
  • “formwork companies Sydney”
• Long-tail blogs now bring in top-of-funnel traffic from people searching for specific topics like types of formwork and what is formwork
• Keywords are also tactically bringing in traffic from commercial intent searches “formwork contractors”, “formwork companies sydney”

This wasn’t achieved with AI blogs or keyword stuffing. It was built through clean site structure, careful keyword research, and helpful, human-written content that people actually want to read.

See the full case study here: Future Form SEO Case Study

Paintworld: Doubled Traffic and Tripled Keyword Rankings

Paintworld is a well known paint and hardware supplier in Australia. They already had a functioning eCommerce site, but it wasn’t attracting the kind of traffic it should have.

Our goal was to improve product visibility, category relevance, and long-tail content to bring in qualified search traffic.

The result:

• Monthly organic traffic in Australia grew from about 5000 visitors to over 12,000
• Keyword footprint on Google almost tripled
• Major visibility improvements for branded paint ranges, categories, and niche topics like:
  • “how to paint a fence”
  • “Rust-Oleum Products”
  • “Paint Shop”
  • “oil based vs water-based paint”
  • “how to dsipose of mineral turps”
• Product and collection pages now rank higher due to refined metadata, improved content and internal linking structure from blog and article pages.

See the full case study here: Paintworld SEO Case Study

SEO Isn’t Just About Traffic. It’s About the Right Kind of Traffic.

Getting more visitors is only useful if those visitors:

• Weren’t finding you before
• Are actively looking for something you offer
• Can easily navigate your website once they land

A 200% increase in traffic sounds great. But if it’s all coming from irrelevant or international searches, it means nothing.

The most valuable traffic comes from:

• Unbranded searches (for example, “formwork contractor” instead of “Future Form”)
• Local, product-specific or high-intent queries
• Queries people have before buying (such as “best roof paint”)

This is the kind of SEO that delivers leads and sales. It only works if your site is actually useful, not just active.

SEO and Website Structure Go Hand in Hand

Many businesses invest in SEO without realising their website is holding them back.

That’s why our website development service at dotMD is designed with SEO in mind from day one:

• Clear and intuitive navigation
• Fast site speed
• Mobile responsiveness
• Crawlable site structure
• Metadata that helps both users and search engines
• Default SEO setups to give a front-end boost

If your site isn’t set up to convert visitors, then SEO is only solving half the problem.

AI Content: Useful Tool or Useless Shortcut?

AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini can be incredibly powerful. We use them too, but with caution.

What doesn’t work is this:

Prompt: “Write an article about exterior house painting”
Publish it with no editing or research

This type of content:

• Isn’t based on real search intent
• Sounds generic or off-brand
• Doesn’t reflect your local market or tone
• Offers no insight or relevance

Google doesn’t penalise AI content just for being AI. What it ignores is poor quality content.
That includes:

• Articles no one clicks
• Posts with no internal links
• Pages that people bounce from immediately

If you want to use AI, use it like a tool. Feed it proper research. Base it on what people are actually searching. Edit it like a human. Make it sound like something your customer would want to read.

Otherwise, it’s noise. And Google is designed to filter noise out.

Even Forbes agrees that SEO in 2024 is all about quality, relevance, and user-first content, not quick wins or gaming the algorithm.

What SEO Success Is vs What It Isn’t

So, how do we conclude?

SEO success isn’t about publishing more articles or ranking for more keywords.
It’s about getting the right people to your website and giving them a reason to stay.

If you’re a business owner trying to build long-term visibility, proper SEO is one of the best investments you can make. But only if it’s done with the right foundation and the right goals.

If you want to know what’s holding your site back, or you’re ready to build something that works properly, get in touch with us or explore our SEO services. We’ll show you what real results look like.