Website vs Facebook page: why your business needs both — but one far more than the other

This question comes up constantly with new and small businesses. The logic is understandable: a Facebook business page is free, most of your customers are already on it, and setting one up takes less than an hour. Why spend money on a website when a Facebook page does the job?

The short answer: it doesn't do the job. Not the whole job. Facebook and a website serve different purposes, and the businesses that rely solely on Facebook are building on ground they don't own — which is a much bigger problem than most people realise until something goes wrong.

The fundamental problem with Facebook: you don't own it

When you build your business on Facebook, you are a tenant. Meta is the landlord. And unlike a commercial lease with legal protections, Meta can change the terms whenever they like, with no notice and no compensation.

This isn't hypothetical. Over the past decade, Facebook has:

• Repeatedly changed its algorithm so that business pages reach a fraction of their followers organically — figures that were consistently above 10% in 2012 had dropped to 2–5% by 2016 and have continued falling
• Introduced paid promotion as the only reliable way to reach people who have already chosen to follow your page
• Changed rules around what types of posts are promoted, penalising anything that looks “too promotional”
• Suspended and permanently banned business pages — sometimes for reasons the business owner never fully understood, with limited appeal routes
• Experienced outages that took the entire platform offline for hours at a time

Every one of those changes happened to businesses that had done nothing wrong and had no warning. If your business presence is entirely on Facebook, every single one of those events is a business continuity risk.

What Facebook can't do for your Google ranking

This is the most practically important difference for most small businesses. When someone in your town searches “plumber near me” or “best accountant in [town]” or “hairdresser open Saturday Glasgow”, Google shows them a list of results. Almost all of those results are websites.

Facebook pages do not rank in Google searches the way websites do. A Facebook page for “Smith Plumbing Glasgow” will not appear when someone searches “plumber Glasgow” — but a website for Smith Plumbing with a well-structured page about plumbing services in Glasgow absolutely can.

Google's job is to find the most relevant, trustworthy and useful result for any search. It does this by reading and indexing website content — the words on your pages, your headings, your meta descriptions, how fast your site loads, how many other sites link to you. Facebook pages provide almost none of this information in a way Google can use.

The practical implication: if you only have a Facebook page, you are invisible to anyone searching on Google who doesn't already know your business name. You're only reachable by people who are already looking for you specifically — and even then, only if they happen to search on Facebook rather than Google.

What a Facebook page is actually good for

This isn't an argument against using Facebook. For many small businesses, Facebook is genuinely valuable — just not as a substitute for a website.

Facebook is good for:

• Staying visible to existing customers. People who already know you can follow your page and see updates about new services, offers and events. This is retention, not acquisition.
• Word of mouth at scale. When someone shares your post, their friends see it. That organic reach is genuinely useful even if it's lower than it used to be.
• Community building. If your business has a local or interest-based community element, Facebook groups can be valuable.
• Paid advertising. Facebook's ad targeting is sophisticated and can be cost-effective for reaching new local customers, especially for certain kinds of businesses.
• Social proof. Reviews and check-ins on Facebook are visible to potential customers and can reinforce trust.

None of these things replace what a website does. They complement it. The customer journey for most small businesses looks like this: search on Google → land on website → decide whether to get in touch. Facebook might be where they heard of you first, but it's rarely where they make the decision to contact you.

The practical differences side by side

The trust gap

There is a perception issue that affects businesses with only a Facebook presence, even if they're excellent at what they do. Many customers — particularly in B2B, professional services or higher-value transactions — will Google a business before making contact. If they find only a Facebook page, some will move on to a competitor with a proper website, not because the Facebook-only business is worse, but because the website signals a level of establishment and seriousness that Facebook doesn't.

This is especially true for trades and services where the customer is inviting someone into their home or trusting them with something important. A plumber with a professional website showing their qualifications, service areas, reviews and a clear contact form will convert more of those Google searches than a plumber whose only online presence is a Facebook page last updated four months ago.

What about the cost argument?

The reason most small businesses start with Facebook instead of a website is cost. A Facebook page is free. A website costs money to build and maintain.

That calculation changes significantly when you look at what a website actually costs today. A professionally built small business website from GrowMark Digital starts at £595 for the build and £15/mo for hosting. Spread over two years, that's roughly £40/mo — less than most businesses spend on coffee for the office.

And for eligible businesses (age 18–30, trading under 2.5 years), the SWEF Business Grant can cover most or all of the build cost. The website itself becomes essentially free to set up, with only the ongoing monthly costs to cover.

The honest recommendation

Use Facebook. It's worth having a presence there, and it costs nothing to maintain if you're already posting updates for your customers.

But treat it as what it is: a channel for staying in touch with people who already know you, and for getting found by their friends. Not as your primary business presence. Not as a substitute for a website. And certainly not as the thing you'd point a serious potential customer to when they ask where they can find out more about your business.

Your website is the one place online that you control completely, that can work for you on Google, that can take enquiries at 2am, and that will still be there regardless of what Meta decides to do next month. Build that first. Then use Facebook to support it.