Which is more important, your Ranking on Google or your Target Audience Following on Twitter?

Without question you want to be seen online and many companies spend a great deal of their marketing budgets exploring ways to increase the chances of potential customers visiting their website or other capture pages in order to sell their products and services. I thought it time to explore the question of “Which is more important, your Ranking on Google or your Target Audience Following on Twitter?“.

I believe that this comparison is won by Twitter because the value that a target audience that follows you on social media outweighs the key benefits and ROI from achieving a high ranking on Google. Reasons for this are:

  • If you have an active target audience following you on a social media platform, in this case Twitter, then they are far more responsive than those going to Google doing a search for keywords. On Twitter your audience could be either searching for keywords or simply using the channel to socialise / network and on each occasion can come past a post from you that sells them your product / service.
  • Twitter has it’s own search facility so just like Google, you will appear on a list of most relevant. You can appear as not only an account, but by Tweet, image, news and more… Correct keyword / hashtagging allows you to be seen just as keywords and phrases, titled images etc gives you presence on Google.
  • You can promote your account and Tweets which is the same as sponsored placements  for keywords on Google.
  • If you grow a sizeable target audience on Twitter you could achieve more engagement with your Tweets over the amount of times your keyword / phrase is searched for on Google.
  • Google is all about waiting for people to use their platform to search for keywords, you can not affect who will be using the search engine and when. On Twitter, with a target audience following, you can market to each individual person when you want to and on many occasions, with push notifications etc, your followers will be notified when they are mentioned. Clever and non-spam style marketing with this in mind, can deliver far better results over Google.
  • If you have a large and active target audience on a social media platform, then you have a whole marketing channel in the palm of your hand that outweighs advertising in the local paper, industry magazines, Google ranking, leaflet dropping and more… Just imagine that the town you have your estate agency in has 25,000 residents and that those 25,000 followed you on Twitter – Each and every tweet you send has the chance to be seen by all of them at some point another over a period of say 2 weeks to 1 month and you can message them with your promotions, listings, news whenever you decide with whatever keyword and content you wish ~ surely that is an incredibly valuable tool to have?

I am not suggesting that we simply ignore Google or do not put into place actions that help with ranking us on their search engine, we’d be foolish to do that – But I do believe that to see a better ROI, especially during 2015 and the next few years until we are presented with another marketing style / trend, we should look to spend our marketing budgets / time more towards social media over than our placements on Google.

No doubt that the likes of house for sale or property auction are great search terms to be found with on Google, but the costs of these are growing and at present, the likes of your search term being presented to an interested party on their news feed is currently free, the mathematics tell me that so long as your target audience is growing, then the better ROI you’ll see from Twitter over Google.

Christopher Walkey

Founder of Estate Agent Networking. Internationally invited speaker on how to build online target audiences using Social Media. Writes about UK property prices, housing, politics and affordable homes.

You May Also Enjoy

Breaking News

Breaking Property News 5/5/26

Daily bite-sized proptech and property news in partnership with Proptech-X.   New AI Real Estate Market Intelligence Platform Launches in the U.S.   Press Release – New York, May 2026 — Rodland Real Estate, a leading independent brokerage headquartered in The Bahamas, has announced the U.S. launch of RoRo, an advanced AI-powered real estate market intelligence…
Read More
Breaking News

Mortgage affordability at tightest level since 2008

UK Finance has today published a new Lending Where We Live report, revealing sharp differences in mortgage affordability and buy‑to‑let returns across the UK. Key findings 723,000 house purchase mortgages advanced in 2025, up 17 per cent year-on-year Average borrower spends 21.3 per cent of gross income on repayments Significant regional differences: North Norfolk and Hillingdon top the list with borrowers spending over 25 per cent of gross income Seven…
Read More
Breaking News

Did landlords frontload rent hikes ahead of the RRA?

The latest insight from Inventory Base suggests that, despite the incoming Renters’ Rights Act limiting rent increases to once per year, only around a quarter of landlords appeared to pre-empt the change by front-loading rent rises ahead of the 1st May deadline. This comes amid wider policy uncertainty in the rental sector, with the UK…
Read More
Rightmove logo
Breaking News

Rightmove to host live Q&A webinar on the Renters’ Rights Act

Rightmove is hosting a live Q&A webinar today to help agents better understand the Renters’ Rights Act and its practical implications as the Act takes effect. The Renters’ Rights Act: Live Q&A webinar will take place on Tuesday 5th May from 10:00am to 11:00am and will be available to watch via the Rightmove Hub. Over…
Read More
Home and Living

War over bin blunders as legal expert reveals what you can actually do

Rows over rubbish are bubbling up, with fed-up homeowners losing patience over neighbours who refuse to bring their bins back in. Now, a legal expert has revealed the simple steps you can take before things spiral into a full-blown neighbourhood feud. Natalie Peacock of Rogers and Norton explained that while it might be tempting to…
Read More
Breaking News

The UK’s best place to be a buy-to-let landlord in 2026 – and it isn’t London

Manchester tops the list with an average property price below the UK average and an annual rental return of 6.4%, beating all 32 London boroughs. Newcastle upon Tyne ranks second and is the only area in the study to deliver an annual return of more than 7%, while Blackpool places third. New research ranks 310…
Read More