You get calls. Somebody messages the Facebook page on a Tuesday night, somebody else taps the phone number on your Google listing, and the work keeps showing up. So when you ask do I need a website if I have a Facebook page, you are not being cheap. You are asking whether a real expense buys you anything you do not already have. Fair question, and it deserves better than “everybody has one.” Here is what nobody sent a memo about: both free shortcuts people used to dodge it are gone, and the setup you wired up in 2022 is probably out of policy right now.
Do I need a website if I have a Facebook page and a Google Business Profile?
Yes. Not because a website is a rite of passage, but because both profiles are rented space with a website-shaped hole in the middle, and Google’s rules say you cannot plug it with Facebook. If your Website field points at a facebook.com address, that is not a clever workaround. That is a non-compliant link sitting in a field Google says it audits.
What do Google’s link rules actually say?
Google’s business links policies and guidelines say two things that matter for you. Local business links have to lead to a dedicated landing page for your business, and they cannot be social media sites, messaging links, app store links, or link shorteners. (Checked August 2026. Go read it yourself, it is short.)
Also, quoted exactly: “Google will regularly check whether the business links you have provided are in compliance with our policies, and we may remove any non-compliant links.” So it might survive. Or it gets stripped, and your profile shows no website button at all. Worse than day one.
Half the fix is free and takes a minute, because Google has a separate Social profiles field for exactly this: one link per platform, across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, X and YouTube. Look under Edit profile, then Contact. As of August 2026 Google says social links are “available in select regions,” so if it is not there, that is why. Put Facebook in it and leave the Website field for a website. Which, yes, means you need a website.
Didn’t Google used to hand out a free website for this?
It did, and that fallback is gone. The free sites Google generated from your Business Profile (the .business.site addresses) were turned off in March 2024, and the redirect that kept those URLs pointing at your profile ended June 10, 2024. After that, “page not found.” Google never provided an export, so treat that content as gone. And if the address is still printed on a truck, update the truck.
What is a Google Business Profile actually good at?
If I had to pick one free thing for a local business, it is this. It is very good at one job: converting somebody already close to buying. Somebody who knows your name, or is standing three blocks away searching a category. Hours, photos, reviews, tap to call, done.
Here is where it stops. You get Google’s layout, Google’s fields, Google’s photo cropping, one website link. No quote form that routes where you need it, no page explaining why the $8,000 version of your job costs $8,000. Very good business card. Still a business card. Everything after the tap – explaining, proving, pricing, qualifying – is work a website does and a profile structurally cannot.
How do you know you are past getting by?
- Does anyone ever ask you to “send me something”? A price sheet, a service list, a proposal. If you are screenshotting Facebook posts or attaching a PDF you made in 2021, you already need a site. You are doing its job by hand, at night.
- Do people compare you against two other companies first? Comparison shoppers read. They want scope, process, proof. A profile gives them five reviews and a phone number, then they go read your competitor’s services page.
- Do customers search your name, or your service? If people type “Miller Roofing,” your profile takes that one. If they type “roof repair Grove City,” everything below the map is website territory your profile can only partly reach.
- If Meta disabled your page tomorrow, what happens? Not a scare tactic. Just a question about where your customer list and photos live, and whether there is anyone to call. Not really – appeals run through a form, and the only direct line is a paid Meta Verified subscription.
One honest exception, and it is narrow: no customers yet and still testing whether anybody wants the thing? Go get the first sale first. That expires the moment somebody asks you to send them something. Said yes to any of those four? You are past it already, and the site you needed six months ago is the one you are paying for now in unbilled phone time. Send us the details and we will scope it.
What does going without actually cost you?
The website slot on your profile, and the click data with it. Google counts website clicks as one of the main actions people take on a profile. No website, no signal, and you lose one of the few free measurements you get.
Any real shot at ranking for the service instead of the business name. Your Facebook page can rank for your business name. Ranking for the thing you sell, in the town you sell it in, is much harder, because the pages that win are built to answer that question in that town. It is the highest-return page most local businesses do not have.
A quote flow you control. Messenger is fine until you want a form that captures the four things you need to price a job, routes it to your email, and does not depend on somebody having the app open.
An asset you own. The only one with no workaround. You rent the Facebook page. You rent the Google profile. What you own is a domain and the site on it, and nothing we build locks you in: the design files and content are yours to keep, and the site runs on standard WordPress. Fire us and you take it wherever you like. Not the arrangement you have with a social platform.
Could you just have AI spin one up in an afternoon?
This comes up on almost every first call now, so let’s do it properly. If you have never touched any of this: yes, there are tools that take a description of your business and hand back a website-shaped thing in minutes. Real, and also not magic. What comes out is a starting point. A layout, copy about a category instead of you, a stock photo of somebody else’s kitchen. A draft, not an asset.
And if you already tried and something felt off, you are not imagining it, and you did not miss a setting. The gap is specific: spacing that goes ragged the second you open it on a phone, a contact form that looks fine and quietly does not deliver, images four times heavier than they should be, no heading structure a screen reader can follow, page titles nobody searches for, no plan for what the page should make somebody do. Invisible in the preview. Expensive live. Not a prompting problem you are one tutorial away from solving. That is the job.
We use AI here every day. It is good at a first draft and the boring middle of a build. It does not decide what a page has to accomplish, does not know your margins, and does not own the mistake when the form stops sending. We do. And if the honest reason nothing has happened yet is that you do not have eight free evenings, say it without embarrassment. Most common reason there is. Handing it off is the same math you ran when you stopped doing your own books.
What does the smallest legitimate website actually look like?
A domain you own, real photos of your real work, a form that reliably emails you, and five to ten pages: home, one page per service you want more of, an about page with your actual face on it, contact, and a service-area page if you drive to customers. The shape of nearly every small business site we build.
Our Launch package is $2,400 flat: brand kit, custom design, the full build, ten pages of real content, on-page SEO, and training so you can edit it. Not a starting-at number. After that, our Care plan is $300 a month, month to month. And if you are hunting for a line to trim, trim a different one. A website is software connected to the internet, so updates, backups, monitoring and security patching are the difference between a bad Tuesday and rebuilding from nothing. Ask anybody who has been through it. For what drives cost up from there, read how much a small business website costs.
The version I actually recommend: profile, reviews, and five good pages
These are not competitors. They feed each other. Your Google Business Profile catches people who are ready now, and reviews are the biggest lever you control there. The website is where that profile’s link is supposed to point, so the whole thing stays in policy. Your service pages catch the searches the profile cannot reach, and answer the questions you would otherwise answer on the phone at 8pm. Facebook goes in the Social profiles field, still doing what it is good at, which is staying visible to people who already like you.
Every piece points at another on purpose, instead of one lonely profile pointing at nothing.
Common questions
Can I use my Facebook page as my website link on Google?
No. Google’s policy says local business links cannot be social media sites, and Google removes non-compliant ones when it finds them. Put Facebook in the Social profiles field, and a real site in the field it vacated.
Is a one-page website good enough?
One page is a legitimate shape for one service in one town, and we build them when it fits. What one page cannot do is win three different searches, because each wants its own headline and its own proof, and a single page only leads with one. That is a scope call we make with you, not a way to skip the build.
I already made something with an AI builder. Can you work with that?
Sometimes, and we will tell you straight instead of quoting blind. If the bones are sound we keep them. More often the faster path is a rebuild on a foundation we can maintain, carrying over what was good: your words, your photos, your structure. Send the link through the contact page and we will look at the real thing first.
Do I still need to post on Facebook if I have a website?
If it is working, keep doing it. A website does not replace the audience you built. It gives that audience somewhere to land that you control, and gives strangers a way to find you at the moment they are searching for what you sell. A feed only does that by accident.
So, homework, and it is free: open your Google Business Profile, and if a facebook.com URL is sitting in the Website field, move it down to Social profiles. Fifteen minutes. Do it today.
Then look at the empty field you just made, because that is the real question. Something has to go there, and it should be a page you own on a domain you own. Want a number before a conversation? The pricing page has a calculator that gives you one in about two minutes. Would rather say it out loud to somebody who builds these for a living? Tell us what you are working with. No drip campaign. Just an answer, and then a website with your name on it.