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Every few weeks someone tells me they don’t need a website because they have a Facebook page. Usually with real pride. It has 1,200 followers, a cover photo from a good day, and a pinned post about holiday hours from two Christmases ago.
I get it. Facebook is free, it’s where your customers scroll, and you already know how to use it. But a Facebook page is a booth at somebody else’s flea market. The landlord sets the rules, changes the layout whenever he feels like it, and can lock the gate on you with no phone number to call.
The short version
Yes, if you want people who don’t already follow you to find you, trust you and hire you. Facebook is built for people who already know you exist. A website is built for the person who has never heard of you and just typed “pressure washing near me” into Google at 9pm.
That second person is the one you actually want. They have a problem, a phone in their hand and their wallet half open. Plenty of them won’t bother logging into Facebook to scroll your page and dig through posts to figure out whether you do driveways. (Some of them don’t even have Facebook. They exist. I’ve met them.)
Your page also doesn’t answer questions well. Want to know if this plumber covers your town, what a water heater swap runs, or whether they work Saturdays? On a website that’s one page. On Facebook it’s an archaeological dig through 300 posts of memes and “Happy Fourth!” graphics.
You lose access to everything on it, and getting it back can take weeks or never happen at all. That’s not a scare tactic. It’s the part of the deal nobody reads.
Earlier this year, KWCH reported on a woman who’d been on Facebook for 17 years and got permanently disabled after a security alert text, saying she did nothing wrong. Meta said it was rolling out a centralized support hub for locked-out users. As of that report, she was still locked out. Losing the account also cut off other apps she’d logged into with Facebook.
Now picture that’s your business. Your reviews, your photo gallery, your messages from customers, the inbox where three people asked for quotes last Tuesday. Gone. And because a business page hangs off a personal profile, a problem with your own login can take the whole damn shop down with it.
With a website, the worst case is your hosting company has a bad afternoon. Annoying, sure. But you still own the domain, you have backups, and you can move the whole thing somewhere else by Friday. Try moving a Facebook page. You can’t, and that’s a real pain in the ass. You just start over at zero followers like it’s your first day of middle school.
Sometimes, but not for the searches that pay your bills. Google may show your page when someone searches your exact business name. That’s helpful for people who already know you. It does almost nothing for “best roofer in Palm Coast” or “same day AC repair.”
To rank for those, Google needs pages that clearly say what you do, where you do it and why anyone should trust you. One page per main service. Real photos. Your service area written out like a human would say it. A Facebook page gives you a short About blurb and a feed that buries everything older than a week.
The same goes for AI search. When someone asks ChatGPT or Google’s AI Mode who to call, those tools pull from pages they can read and quote. A clean services page with plain answers is easy to cite. A Facebook post that says “DM for pricing!!” is not. I wrote more about that shift in Google AI Mode being the new front door, and it’s only getting more true.
For about a month, maybe. It’s fine as a starter tent while you figure out what you sell and who buys it. Just don’t move in and hang pictures on the walls.
The trap I see all the time: a business runs on Facebook alone for five years, builds a real following, then realizes none of it shows up on Google and every lead depends on the algorithm being in a good mood. That’s a hell of a way to run a business. Meanwhile the competitor down the road with a plain, half decent website is getting the calls from people who’ve never heard of either of them.
So here’s my honest advice for a new business. Grab your domain on day one, in your own name (not your nephew’s, not the web guy’s, yours; I have a whole rant about who owns your domain). Put up even a simple site with your services, area, phone number and a few real photos. Then use Facebook to send people there.
Think of Facebook as the window display and the website as the store. The display gets people to stop walking. The store is where they actually buy something.
In practice that looks like this. Post the before and after photo on Facebook, then link to the full project or service page on your site. Answer a common question in a quick video, then put the longer answer on your website where Google can find it next year. Put your website link in your Facebook bio, and your Facebook link in your website footer. They should feel like the same business, not two cousins who don’t talk.
And collect something you own. An email list, a text list, even a simple quote form that lands in your inbox. Followers are rented. A list of customers who asked to hear from you is yours, and nobody in a data center can switch it off.
No. They do different jobs. Facebook is good for staying in front of people who already know you, and a website is how strangers find you, check you out and contact you. You want both, with the website as home base.
You can, and plenty of businesses do, but you’re paying in other ways. You give up control, most of your Google visibility and any way to recover if the account gets disabled. Free gets expensive fast when the page disappears.
A homepage, a page for each main service, an about page with real people in it, and a contact page with your phone number and area. Add your hours and a few honest photos. That beats a Facebook page for search, and it won’t vanish because of a weird text message.
Look, I’m not anti Facebook. I post there every day and it’s a great place to show off work and talk with people. I just don’t want anyone’s whole business riding on a platform that can ghost them over a weekend. If you’re running on a Facebook page and a prayer, I’ll help you build a real home base that ties it all together. Check out what I build, or start a project and tell me what you’ve got.
The outreach Autobot I run for businesses, learning your voice and talking to the right people every day so more of them find you and reach out.
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