Cutting Through the Noise: Why Small Businesses Are Often Misled on SEO

If you’re a small business owner, you’ve probably heard it all when it comes to SEO. Advice from your web designer. Insights from your IT person. Tips from a well-meaning friend who “knows a guy.” Everyone seems to have an opinion on how to get your business to rank number one on Google.
And if you’re not especially tech-savvy, how are you supposed to know what’s good advice—and what’s garbage?

We get it. It’s confusing. And in an already noisy digital world, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. But here’s the truth: just because someone works in a technical field doesn’t make them an SEO expert

Most IT professionals and web designers are excellent at their jobs. They stay in their lane, focusing on their core craft. Your IT person keeps your network secure, your data backed up, and your email flowing. Your web designer creates a professional website that looks sharp and functions smoothly.
But every so often, someone strays beyond their expertise. They dabble in SEO. They watch a two-hour crash course on YouTube or skim a few blogs and suddenly feel confident enough to offer advice—or worse, take over your SEO strategy entirely.

This is where things can go sideways, fast.

Bad SEO advice doesn’t just stall your progress; it can reverse it. We’ve seen small businesses disappear from search rankings because of misguided SEO “help.” Websites blocked from being indexed. Pages loaded with the wrong keywords. Shoddy backlink strategies that trigger Google penalties.

And this isn’t happening in some far-off corner of the web. It’s happening in local economies, where bad advice is costing businesses real money. Millions of dollars are lost every year by small businesses that followed the wrong SEO advice from someone who wasn’t qualified to give it.

Why does this happen? Because everyone wants to be a hero. And in an effort to add value, some IT professionals and web designers step outside their area of expertise. They mean well—but in trying to do a little bit of everything, they end up doing damage.

The Specialist Analogy: Would You Trust Your Dentist to Do Heart Surgery?

Let’s put this into a context everyone understands: health care.
Just because a dentist is a doctor doesn’t mean you’d let them perform surgery on your heart—or your GI tract. Sure, they both wear white coats. They both went to medical school. But they have different specialties. You wouldn’t ask your eye doctor to check your liver. And you certainly wouldn’t let your dentist handle a complex gastrointestinal surgery.
You’d go to a specialist. Someone whose entire focus is on that part of the body, who’s dedicated years—sometimes decades—to mastering their field.

The same goes for SEO.

Your IT person knows hardware, networks, and cybersecurity. They’re essential to your business, but they’re not trained in search algorithms or content strategy.
Your web designer knows how to make your site visually appealing and user-friendly. But SEO isn’t about design—it’s about visibility, rankings, and driving traffic that converts.
An SEO professional spends every day analyzing algorithms, optimizing websites, developing content strategies, and building authority. It’s not a side gig. It’s a specialty. And just like in medicine, if you need real results, you go to a specialist.

The Cost of Letting the Wrong Person Handle SEO

We aren’t just talking about small mistakes here. SEO errors can have real consequences:

• Getting your website de-indexed because someone blocked search engines in your robots.txt file.
• Duplicate content penalties from improper redirects when switching to HTTPS.
• Keyword stuffing and other outdated tactics that hurt your rankings instead of helping them.
• Lost leads and revenue because your website isn’t visible to the people searching for what you offer.

These are things we’ve seen over and over. Not because the people involved were careless—but because they didn’t know what they didn’t know.

We Know It Can Be Confusing

It’s tough when you’re a small business trying to make smart decisions about your digital marketing. You see people working on your computers or building your website, and it’s easy to assume they know SEO too. But assuming that is like expecting your dentist to also be a cardiologist.

SEO requires its own playbook, its own tools, and a completely different focus.
And in today’s competitive landscape, you can’t afford to get it wrong.

The Bottom Line

Stay in your lane. Trust the experts in their fields.
Your IT person should focus on security and systems.
Your web designer should focus on aesthetics and functionality.
And your SEO? That should be handled by someone who spends every day working on search visibility, algorithm updates, and ranking strategies.

It’s not about pointing fingers. It’s about respecting the craft.
When you work with specialists in their respective fields, your business wins.
And when you put SEO in the hands of someone who lives and breathes it?
That’s when the real magic happens.