Notes

You have a Facebook page. Do you still need a website?

James Prior, Foothold Web · September 2026

Plenty of good businesses in the Triangle run on a Facebook page and a Google listing. The phone rings, the work is steady, and a website feels like an expense with no obvious payoff. Here is the case for building one anyway, without pretending Facebook is useless. It is not. It is just doing a different job than you think.

Facebook works when people already know your name

Search your business name on Google and your Facebook page probably shows up. That is Facebook doing what it does well: confirming you exist to someone who has already heard of you, usually from a neighbor. Social proof, photos of the work, the occasional message. Keep it.

Facebook does not work when a stranger searches for what you do

Now search the way a new customer does: "lawn care Apex," "tow truck near me," "septic pumping Wake County." Look at what comes up. A map with a few businesses on it, then a list of websites. No Facebook pages. Google has no way to match a Facebook page to that search, because a Facebook page has no page about your services, no page about the towns you cover, and none of the structure Google reads. The businesses in those results have a website and a Google Business Profile. That is the whole list of what competes for a service search, and those searches are where new customers come from.

"We are doing fine without one"

Good. Doing well with no website tells me what you do is in demand and people are looking for it. A website does not replace that, it amplifies it. It reaches the people who are not on Facebook, and the people who do not know anybody who has used you. Every one of those becomes a customer who can refer you to the next one, which grows the referral network you already built. And it keeps the phone ringing in the slow months, because people searching for what you do search year-round, referrals or not.

The trust problem

Anybody can put up a Facebook page in ten minutes and buy followers. A good website takes effort, and people can tell. Some customers will not call a business that does not have one, and you will never know how many, because they simply called the next name on the list.

What "a website" means here

Not a big one. A few clean pages that load instantly on a phone: what you do, the towns you work in, photos, reviews, and a button that dials your number. That is what Google needs to match you to a search, and it is what a stranger needs to decide you are the safe choice. It is also all I build, on purpose, which is why it costs $450 instead of several thousand. The full pricing picture is here.

What to do this week, even if you never call me

Claim and finish your Google Business Profile if you have not: categories, hours, service area, photos. That alone puts you in the map results for your name and, sometimes, for your service. Then post the same phone number and business name everywhere you appear, spelled the same way. Mismatches are one of the quiet reasons a listing slips. Here is the longer version of that.

Also in Notes: What a small business website costs in North Carolina · What the $90 a month actually covers · How to actually show up on Google Maps