The ten second test
Ask where the thing you are selling actually lives.
If it lives on other platforms, a marketplace, a booking system, a video channel, a shop, then your page is a junction and its job is to send people onwards quickly. That is a link page.
If it lives with you, meaning the information itself is what people need, then your page is a destination and its job is to explain. That is a website.
What a link page is for
A link page succeeds when somebody leaves it quickly, through the right exit. Everything about it is optimised for that: big tappable buttons, short labels, the most important thing at the top.
- Creators sending followers to videos, shops and newsletters.
- Sellers listing on more than one marketplace.
- Anyone whose profile gives them one clickable link and several places to send it.
- Anything that changes weekly, since reordering a list is faster than editing a page.
Judged as a website it looks thin. It is not a thin website, it is a well made junction.
What a website is for
A website succeeds when somebody stays, reads and then does something. It carries the explaining that a link page has nowhere to put.
- Service businesses, where the visitor needs to know what you do, where and roughly what it costs.
- Portfolios where the work needs presenting rather than listing.
- Anything that needs to rank in search for what it is, since search engines index the words on the page.
- Events, where the details are the content.
The search difference
This is the part people miss. A link page has very little text on it, so there is almost nothing for a search engine to match a query against.
That is fine, because a link page is reached from a profile rather than from a search. Nobody types a query hoping to find a list of buttons.
A website is different. If you want to appear when somebody searches for what you do in the place you do it, you need words on a page saying exactly that. A link page cannot carry them and should not try.
Most people end up with both
The common arrangement: a site at one address for explaining, a link page at another for social profiles, and the link page's top button pointing at the site.
That is not duplication. They are doing different jobs for people arriving from different places, and both can sit in the same account under the same domain family.
The mistake is building one and expecting it to do both, then wondering why it feels wrong for half its visitors.
Which to build first
Whichever answers the more urgent question.
If people keep asking what you charge and where you cover, build the site. If people keep asking where they can buy the thing they saw, build the link page.
Both take an afternoon. Build the urgent one, use it for a month, and let the second one be a reaction to something real rather than a plan.