Encourage multiple page visits, use social video for successful 2026 publishing strategy

By Jack Neary | Mar 14, 2026 | 4 Min read

Jack Neary

AFTER analysing a year’s worth of audience data across thousands of Web sites, we’ve uncovered five insights about traffic, engagement, and growth to implement into your 2026 publishing strategy.

Here’s what the numbers show and what it means for your content strategy.

Lesson 1: Viewing just one additional page dramatically increases return visits

It’s easy to obsess over acquiring traffic, but all that effort may be for naught if new visitors don’t make it to a second page.

In a year-long study, first-time visitors who viewed only one page had an 8% return rate within the next week.

Those who viewed just one more page saw their return rate jump to 22% — making them 2.75 times more likely to come back.

This represents the single biggest relative jump in return rate, with the effect plateauing after four pages.

Why this matters:

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Rather than trying to get visitors to consume large amounts of content, publishers can focus on the simpler goal of getting first-time visitors to click just one more page — a much more achievable conversion that delivers substantial impact on return rates.

Lesson 2: Social video remains a massive opportunity for news publishers

You just have to know when and where to post.

For example, in the fourth quarter of 2025 we found the video duration for TikTok videos that Latin American news and politics media publishers upload the least (five to 10 minutes) actually earns the most engagements per video.

Why this matters:

While many publishers have employed the strategy of clipping long-form news videos into shorter clips for platforms like TikTok, we’re actually seeing long-form videos starting to perform better.

Lesson 3: Your most valuable traffic source might already be on your site

Internal traffic, or readers moving from one article to another on your site, accounts for 40% of all pageviews.

This is too large a piece of the traffic puzzle not to explore further.

When we traced internal traffic back to its origin, we discovered direct traffic doubles from 13% to 25% of total site traffic.

In other words, your most loyal, intentional audience — those who type in your URL or use bookmarks — are driving the majority of recirculation on your site.

Why this matters:

These direct visitors aren’t just showing up; they’re engaging.

They average 2.2 pages per session with 45.2 seconds of engaged time, significantly outperforming social traffic at 1.4 pages and 34.4 seconds.

This finding reframes how publishers should think about traffic attribution and loyalty.

Internal traffic isn’t random; it’s powered largely by return visitors who arrive with direct intent.

By understanding that recirculation is driven by your most engaged audience, publishers can optimise the home page and navigation specifically for these loyal readers rather than treating all traffic as homogeneous.

Lesson 4: The presence of AI might matter more than AI products themselves

After introducing AI into headline tests at Chartbeat, we found AI-assisted headline experiments deliver a 32% click-through rate lift across all tests, compared to just 6% for non-AI experiments.

Even more interesting is there’s a lift even when the AI-generated headline doesn’t win. Let that sink in: Simply including AI in the testing process drives dramatically better performance overall.

Why this matters:

The presence of AI in the testing process appears to push human editors to think more critically and creatively about their own headlines.

AI suggestions force us to justify our choices, consider alternatives, and sometimes discover our first instinct wasn’t our best.

Lesson 5: Search is falling, but it’s still a major channel

Let’s address the narrative that’s dominated industry conversations over the last year: Traffic is dying, the platforms have won, publishers are doomed.

The data tells a different story. While global weekly pageviews in 2025 did dip about 6% compared to 2024, traffic isn’t disappearing — it’s shifting.

Google search traffic accounts for a large portion of the decrease, dropping 33% from November 2024 to November 2025, but it still accounts for more than 20% of traffic to news sites.

Why this matters:

A 33% decline sounds catastrophic until you realise search still drives one in five visits to your site.

Abandoning SEO because search traffic is down would be like closing your second-busiest storefront because sales didn’t match your busiest.

This year, continue to invest in search discoverability as well as how you move these new visitors down the loyalty funnel once they find you.

5 takeaways for you and your team

 Optimise for the second click. That leap from one to two pageviews is your highest-leverage opportunity to build returning readers.

 Experiment on emerging platforms. TikTok won’t be underutilised forever. The time to learn and grow there is now.

 Invest in your owned audience. Direct traffic drives recirculation. Make your site worthy of bookmarks and repeat visits.

 Use AI as a thinking partner. The value isn’t just in AI’s output but also in how it sharpens your own.

 Stop mourning platform traffic. Audience behaviour is shifting, and that’s OK. Build for the audience you can actually own