Are You a Victim of Shiny Object SEO?

There’s a phrase that’s been around in the digital marketing world for years: shiny object syndrome. It describes the person who finds a great new idea, gets excited about it, starts implementing it, and then discovers an even better idea three weeks later and moves on to that instead.

They’re constantly busy. They’re constantly learning. They’re constantly trying new things. But when you look back at what they’ve actually built over the last few years, there often isn’t much there.

I think SEO has exactly the same problem. I call it Shiny Object SEO.

Every few months there seems to be another trick, hack, loophole or strategy that everyone suddenly needs to be doing. The problem is that some of these things genuinely work, which makes them incredibly difficult to ignore. You can make money from them. You can generate traffic with them. You can get fantastic results from them.

But there’s a question I think we forget to ask: how long is this going to work for?

If the strategy makes you money for six months but then forces you to find another strategy, and then another one six months after that, you haven't really built a sustainable marketing system. You've built a business that depends on you continually discovering the next thing.

Black hat SEO is probably the most obvious example. The attraction has always been speed. What can I do now that will improve my results now and make me money now?

Sometimes the results can be ridiculous. The problem comes when the loophole closes, Google changes something or the technique gets abused so heavily that it stops working. At that point, everyone moves on and starts searching for the next opportunity.

I'm not against experimenting with these things. Far from it. I've spent a large part of my career testing things to see what happens. The mistake is confusing a temporary opportunity with the foundations of a business.

Short-term strategies have a habit of creating short-term businesses.

The businesses that last tend to be much more boring.

You find something that works. You work out why it works. You create a process around it and eventually turn that process into an SOP. You do it again and again. You measure the results, improve the process and keep repeating it.

If doing something once makes you £100, the interesting question isn't necessarily what completely different thing you can try tomorrow. It's how you can turn that £100 process into something you can repeat 100 times.

That's how real businesses are built.

And I think one of the most useful questions you can ask yourself when looking at any new digital marketing strategy is this:

Could I still be doing this five or ten years from now?

Look at some of the grandfathers of digital marketing.

Email marketing has been around for decades. Building an email list isn't particularly sexy anymore. Nobody is going to announce in 2026 that they've discovered this incredible new marketing channel called email. Yet if you build a genuine audience of people who actually want to hear from you, that audience can continue producing revenue for years.

Local search is another example.

Google Maps has been around for more than 20 years. Google Business Profiles have changed names, features and functionality over that time, but the fundamental behaviour behind them hasn't disappeared.

Someone needs a locksmith, dentist, solicitor, plumber or restaurant. They search for one nearby. Google tries to connect that person with an appropriate local business.

That isn't a loophole. It isn't dependent on somebody forgetting to close a hole in an algorithm. It's based on something much more powerful: human behaviour.

That's the distinction I've started paying far more attention to.

There will always be something new to chase. Right now, AI search is exploding. We're seeing AEO, GEO and seemingly a new acronym every five minutes. Some of the opportunities appearing around AI are genuinely fascinating, and I'm testing plenty of them myself.

But there's a difference between recognising a new opportunity and abandoning everything that already works because something shinier has appeared.

I'll test the new stuff. I'll experiment. I'll take advantage of opportunities when I see them.

But I don't want to confuse new with fundamental.

If you can find a marketing activity that works today, can be turned into a repeatable process and has a logical reason why people will still be using it years from now, you've probably found something far more valuable than the latest SEO hack.

You've found something you can actually build a business around.

And strangely enough, the more time I spend in digital marketing, the more convinced I become that the boring stuff is where the real money is.

If you want to learn more about Google Business Profile optimisation and how to turn it into a repeatable service for local businesses, I've written an entire book on it.

Go to Amazon and search for Google Business Profile Management for Agencies.