The most important thing for a publisher is to get their content – the greatest value they have – to as many users as possible. To achieve this, you need, above all, to go through a competitor analysis – that is, to know your real web competitors at an analytical level – so that you get to know your real community, and have the right strategy to reach relevant users, and of course use a technically appropriate CMS, too.

 

The value of users coming from various social platforms has long been a matter of debate. We can’t state unequivocally that a user from Facebook would be completely worthless, even if their average pageviews rarely exceed 1.1-1.3 (we extracted these data from news site statistics). 

When it comes to users coming from social media, we can usually talk about a high reach, but in terms of conversions, heat map analytics reveal that these one-hit users very often do not even read the article they clicked on. 

Users from organic searches, on the other hand, depending on the topic, style, and structure of your news site, can go up to 2.3-3.2 pageviews and read deeply, meaning they are happy to click on other topics beyond the content they are interested in, if they are properly served – both ergonomically and content-wise. Based on these facts, your traffic diversion strategy should consider: 

  • where the user comes from 
  • what the theme of your news site is
  • how cost-effective you want to be in the long-run.

 

The user/CTR fee

Of course, cost-effectiveness also depends on the surface on which you land users, the technical parameters of the given site (how well it meets Google’s expectations) and, of course, the fee also depends on how much it cost you to direct users from the given platform to your site, besides those arriving from an organic source. 

SEO: the basis of everything

In terms of cost-effectiveness, search engine optimization goes beyond a social platform the operation of which you have no influence on, especially in the medium and long run. 

In the case of an ergonomically designed, technically well-prepared and host-scaled site, in addition to the implementation of technical SEO, the right content strategy and the content-SEO based on it, are of course also important. It makes a huge difference, obviously, whether you want to see fast-moving news on the top of the  search/results page, or important topics that define the preferences of the editorial team.