Do you need a website if you
already have a Facebook page?

We hear this question a lot, usually from a business that is doing fine. A landscaper in Farmville with a Facebook page, 900 followers, and a steady stream of jobs from people who already know the name. A bakery in South Boston that posts the day's specials every morning and sells out. Why pay for a website when the page is free and the phone already rings?

The honest answer is that a Facebook page and a website do different jobs, and only one of them reaches people who have never heard of you. If every customer you will ever need is already following you, keep the page and skip the site. If you want the person who just moved to Prince Edward County and typed "landscaper near me" into Google, you need a website, because that search will never land on your Facebook page.

What a Facebook page does well

Let's be fair to it first, because the page is genuinely useful and we are not telling anyone to delete theirs.

It is the best free tool there is for staying in front of people who already like you. Photos of finished jobs, a note that you are booked through October, a holiday closing, a new truck: your existing customers see it, comment on it, and remember you when their neighbor asks for a recommendation. In small towns, where a lot of business moves through the community group and word of mouth, that matters. Messenger is a fine way for existing customers to reach you. Events and specials get seen. It is free, it takes five minutes to set up, and it is where a lot of your customers already spend their evenings.

For a business whose whole market is people it already knows, that is a lot. The problem is the people it does not know yet.

What a Facebook page cannot do

It does not rank in Google for the searches that bring new customers. Type "plumber Farmville VA" or "roofer South Boston" into Google and look at the results. You will see the map pack with three businesses, then a list of websites. You will almost never see a Facebook page for a local search like that, and when one does appear it is far down the page. Google indexes Facebook pages poorly, the pages have no service or location content for Google to read, and Facebook has no interest in sending its visitors to Google anyway. Every one of those searches goes to a business with a website.

It cannot have a page for each service and each town. The way a small business gets found for "well pump repair Charlotte Court House" is a page on its site about well pump repair that names Charlotte Court House. A Facebook page is one page. It cannot say "we serve Keysville, Drakes Branch, and Chase City" in a way Google can rank; it can only say it in a post that disappears from the feed in two days.

It cannot give you a quote form that emails you. Messenger is fine for people who are already on Facebook and logged in. A homeowner in a Richmond suburb comparing three contractors at 10 p.m. wants to type their address and the problem into a form and get a reply in the morning. If your only option is "message us on Facebook," a share of those people move on to the next name.

It does not give Google a phone number and address it trusts. Google confirms your business details by checking your Google Business Profile against your own website. When the website is missing, there is nothing to confirm against, and the profile is weaker for it. Your Facebook page is not treated as your website; it is treated as one more third-party listing.

It hurts you in the map pack. The map pack is the three-business box at the top of a local search, and it is the single most valuable spot a local business can hold. A Google Business Profile with a real website link ranks better than one without, and a profile that links to a Facebook page is, in our experience, treated about the same as one with no link at all. If you have read why your business isn't showing up on Google Maps, several of the eight causes come back to the site.

You do not control it. Facebook decides who sees your posts, and for years the share of your own followers who see a given post has been small unless you pay to boost it. Facebook can change the layout, hide your reviews, or bury your posts, and there is nothing to appeal. It can also lock your page. We have talked to owners whose page was disabled by an automated system for a "policy violation" nobody could explain, with no human to call and no way to recover ten years of posts and reviews. A website is yours. The domain is registered in your name, the files sit on a server you pay for, and nobody can switch it off.

The two-minute test

Before deciding anything, do this. Open Google on your phone, not logged into your business account, and search the thing a stranger would search: your trade plus your town. "Electrician Lynchburg VA." "Dog groomer Farmville." Do not search your business name; a stranger does not know it.

Look at who appears in the map pack and in the first five results below it. Tap each one. Count how many have a website and how many have only a Facebook page. Then ask honestly: if you were the person searching, which of these would you call? That result page is the market you are either in or out of, and it will tell you more than any article.

What a minimum viable website looks like for a rural business

The good news is that the site you need is small. Not a twenty-page build with a blog and a client portal. Five pages, done properly, is enough to rank in most rural Virginia markets and to turn a searcher into a call.

1. 1Home. The first heading names your trade and your main town: "Plumbing and Well Service in Farmville, VA." A sentence on what you do, a few real customer quotes, and your phone number in the header on every page.
2. 2Services. Each main service gets its own short section, or its own page if you have more than four. What it is, what is included, what problems it solves. Written the way you would explain it on the phone.
3. 3Areas served. The towns and counties you actually drive to, each named, with a sentence or two of real local detail. This is the page that lets you show up for the next town over, where your Google profile alone cannot reach.
4. 4About. Who you are, how long you have been at it, licensing and insurance, a photo of you and the truck. People in small towns hire people, not logos.
5. 5Contact. Phone number as a tap-to-call link, a short form that emails you, your hours, and your service area again. Nothing else.

Two more requirements that are not pages. The site must be fast on a phone over cellular data, because that is how most of your customers will open it and because Google measures it. And the name, address, and phone number on the site must match your Google Business Profile exactly. That is the whole specification. If a site does those things it will beat a Facebook page for new customers every time; this is the kind of site we build most often under websites and web apps.

How the two work together

This is not a choice between the two. The right setup has the website doing the finding and the Facebook page doing the keeping in touch.

A stranger searches Google, finds your site, reads the service page for their town, calls or fills the form. You do the job. You ask for a Google review, and later they follow the Facebook page and see the photo of their own project. Meanwhile the Facebook page links to the site in its About section and in every post that mentions a service, so a follower who wants details on something new ends up on a page that explains it fully and has a form.

The other direction matters too. Your Google Business Profile links to the site, not to Facebook. The site's footer links to the Facebook page. The photos you post on Facebook also go on the profile, where they help you rank. Reviews you collect on Google get quoted on the site. Each piece feeds the others, and the site is the one piece you own outright.

If that sounds like a lot to keep straight, it is less work than it reads. Our local SEO service for Virginia businesses is mostly getting these pieces to agree with each other and then keeping them that way.

A note on Southside Virginia

The math on all of this changes depending on where you are. In Henrico or Chesterfield, most of your competitors already have a website, many have a good one, and a new five-page site gets you to the starting line rather than the front. The work of ranking there is real.

In Charlotte County, Halifax County, Mecklenburg, Lunenburg, and the towns around Farmville, it is different. Run the two-minute test for almost any trade and you will find that half the businesses that come up have only a Facebook page, an unclaimed Google listing, or a site from 2012 that does not work on a phone. In that market a fast, well-built five-page site with an areas page and a verified profile is not one competitor among many. It is frequently the only real website for that trade in the county, and it wins by default. We see it constantly with businesses across Southside Virginia: the first business in a category to do this properly picks up most of the search traffic for years.

What it takes

The objection under the objection is usually cost and hassle, so let's be plain about both. A five-page site of the kind described above is a small project. The bulk of the effort is not design; it is getting the words right, which means a conversation or two about what you do, where you go, and what customers ask you most. You do not need to write anything yourself, but you do need to answer questions.

After launch, the site needs hosting, occasional updates when your services or hours change, security patches, and someone watching that it stays fast and stays in Google's good graces. That is what our Website + SEO Care Plan covers, so the site does not turn into the 2012 site somebody else is competing against in ten years. We do not put prices on the site because every business is different; a conversation is the fastest way to a straight number.

If you already have a site of some kind and are not sure whether it is doing its job, the free website SEO audit will tell you. It checks speed, whether Google can read it, whether it agrees with your profile, and whether it names the towns you serve.

The short version

Keep the Facebook page. It is good at what it does. But if you want the customers who do not know your name yet, the ones typing your trade and your town into Google, you need a website: five pages, fast, phone number in the header, linked from your Google Business Profile. In most of rural Virginia that is enough to be the obvious choice, because almost nobody else has done it. Run the two-minute test tonight and see for yourself.