Take a made-up example. Pine Street Landscaping in Decatur has 1,200 Facebook followers, posts a photo of every finished yard, and has 40 Google reviews at 4.9 stars. The Website button on their Google listing points to their Facebook page. The owner is not wrong to be proud of that page. He is wrong about what it is doing for him.
What a Facebook page is good at
Quite a lot, actually, and none of it should stop.
- Keeping regulars in the loop. “Closed Friday for the holiday.” “Fall cleanups are booking now.”
- Showing this week’s work. A photo of a yard you finished yesterday is the best ad a landscaper has.
- Local groups. Neighborhood groups are where “anyone know a good landscaper?” gets asked, and a page with real photos gets recommended.
- Messenger with people who already know you.
- Costing nothing and taking five minutes to set up.
Keep posting. Pine Street should keep doing exactly what it does on Facebook.
What a Google searcher expects
Now look at it from the other side. Someone in Decatur types “landscaper near me” into Google. They are not on Facebook. They are on Google. They see Pine Street, like the reviews, tap Website, and land on a Facebook page.
What they see is a cover photo, a Like button and whatever was posted last, which might be the holiday closure. If they are not logged in to Facebook, they may see a login prompt instead. What they wanted was a list of services, a service area and a phone number at the top. They go back and tap the next landscaper.
About a third of US consumers say they’re less likely to use a small business with no website (Paychex survey of 1,000+ people). A Facebook page does not count as a website in most of those people’s minds, and the Website button on your listing is where they find that out.
What a page can’t do
- No tap-to-call first screen. On a website, the first thing on a phone is your name, your trade, your town and a call button. On Facebook, the layout is Facebook’s, and the call button is wherever Facebook put it this year.
- No service pages. There is no page about sod installation in Decatur for Google to show someone searching for sod installation in Decatur. Posts scroll away. Pages stay.
- The algorithm decides who sees posts. Most of your followers will not see most of what you post. Facebook shows posts to a fraction of them, and the fraction is not something you control.
- You don’t control it. Facebook can change the layout, restrict the page or disable it, sometimes by mistake, and getting a person to look at it is hard. A page is a rental. A website on your own domain is yours.
- Not everyone is there. Plenty of people in your town do not have a Facebook account, or have one they never open.
What a website does instead
A website is the one place online where you decide everything. The headline. The order of the services. Which photo shows first. What the big button does. It loads the same for everyone, logged in or not, and it does not change when a company in California redesigns its app.
It is also what Google is built around. Your listing links to it, your service pages give Google something to show for specific searches, and a quote form can text you a lead at 9pm when nobody is checking Messenger. None of that is a ranking promise. It is just what each tool was made for.
The answer is both, linked
This is not a choice. The two do different jobs.
- Your website is home base. Google listing, then website, then a call or a quote form. That path should work for a total stranger.
- Your Facebook page is the feed. Photos, updates and conversation for people who already know you.
- Link them. Put the Facebook link in your website footer. Put your website in the Facebook About section, and point the Website button on your Google listing at the real site.
- Reuse the photos. The yard you posted Tuesday belongs on your services page too, where it keeps working after the post scrolls away.
For Pine Street, the change is small. A five-page site with the same photos, the same reviews and a call button at the top. Facebook stays exactly as it is, and the Website button finally goes somewhere a stranger expects.
If your Website button points at a Facebook page today, we will build a free preview of a real home page with your Google reviews on it and text you the link. No cost and no commitment. Get my free preview. For the longer version of why the listing needs a site behind it, read Why your Google listing needs a website.