A lot of DFW small business owners think a Google Business Profile is enough. Or a Facebook page. Or both.
It's not.
Google Business Profile is good for showing up in the map pack when someone searches "hvac near me" or "best salon in Frisco." Facebook is good for staying in front of people who already follow you. Neither one is your website. Neither one is something you own.
What happens when you're Facebook-only
The algorithm changes and your posts stop reaching people. Or Facebook decides your page violates a policy and removes it. You have no email list, no way to contact your customers, no presence anywhere else. That business disappears from the internet overnight — and there's nothing you can do about it.
Google Business Profile has the same problem. It's Google's property. The information about your business lives in their system, on their terms. They can suspend a profile for policy violations, and appeals take weeks.
We've seen this happen. A hair salon in Garland had her Google profile suspended for 6 weeks over a flag she didn't understand. She had no website. Her calls dropped to almost nothing during that stretch.
What a website gives you that nothing else does
A website is yours. The code, the domain, the content — you own all of it. Customers can find you through Google search, through Bing, through someone sharing a link in a neighborhood Facebook group. You control every word on the page. You can show your full menu, your full service list, your pricing, your photos, your story.
You can track who visits and what they look at. You can add a chat widget that captures leads at 2am when nobody's answering the phone. You can get Google reviews to show up directly in search results through structured data. None of that is possible on a Facebook page or a Google profile alone.
The businesses winning local search in DFW — the ones sitting in the top 3 organic results — almost always have a real website with solid content, fast load times, and proper SEO. A Google profile gets you in the map pack. A website gets you everywhere else.
The cost argument
This is where most small business owners stop and think. A website sounds expensive. It doesn't have to be.
A single-page site starts at $199, flat fee. You own it outright. No monthly platform bill. It goes live in 1 to 2 weeks. Your only ongoing costs are domain registration (about $15/year) and hosting (about $5 to $10/month).
That's less than $15/month to have a real web presence you control completely. Compare that to the $25 to $50/month you might be paying Wix or Squarespace for a site you don't own.
The question to ask yourself
If someone in Plano searched your type of business right now and clicked "Web" instead of "Maps" — would they find you? Or would they find your competitor?
If you're running on a Google profile and a Facebook page and wondering why you're not getting more calls, the missing piece is usually a real website. It's not complicated. It just needs to exist.