According to a recent, particularly fascinating Pew Research Center report, the path that readers take to arrive at a news site reveals a lot about their level of engagement with the outlet and its content. In other words, the amount of time someone spends reading an article or browsing an online site depends largely on how they got there—whether they typed in the site’s URL directly, searched on Google or clicked through from social media.

For the report, titled “Social, Search and Direct: Pathways to Digital News,” the Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project team looked at U.S. Internet traffic to 26 of the most popular news sites. The findings show that direct visitors—those who have the site bookmarked or type the URL into the search bar—are much more dedicated to a website, spending more time on it and engaging with the content more than other types of viewers.

Specifically, among other findings, the report showed that direct visitors to a news site:

• Spend about 4 minutes and 36 seconds per visit—about three times as long as those who wind up on the site via a search engine (1 minute 42 seconds) or click through from Facebook (1 minute 41 seconds).
• View roughly five times as many pages per month on the site (24.8, on average) as do viewers coming through searches (4.9) or from Facebook (4.2).
• Visit the site three times as often as do search and social-media readers.

Interestingly, the findings hold true across all types of sites—from national news outlets to sites like BuzzFeed with mostly search- and social-media driven traffic. What’s more is that viewers tend to be one type of reader or the other—they’re either a dedicated reader of news sites or they’re not—and it’s difficult to get them to change their habits.

So, what exactly does this all mean for PR pros?

The findings suggest that, when you place a contributed article in a target outlet, the individuals you’ll impact the most are the devoted readers who fit that site’s demographic. And that’s good news—you’re reaching the audience you hoped for when you pitched the story. These loyal site visitors will absorb and digest the content more than the guy who just clicks on the link from his Facebook wall.

As a post on Media Bistro’s PRNewser pointed out, this also means that traditional earned media placements are still your best bet for reaching clients’ target audiences. Despite all the hype around alternative forms of content and SEO and social-media strategies, nothing beats old-school editorial coverage when it comes to influencing readers. This relieves some of the pressure of trying to create viral content that generates clicks and search visits—those viewers won’t take as much away from the story anyway as do the site’s everyday readers.

So, it seems that the “quality over quantity” argument holds true when it comes to placing content for clients. Spreading the news via social and SEO tactics certainly doesn’t hurt but, in the end, it’s still more important to build solid relationships with journalists and earn media placements than worry about social-media numbers or search-engine rankings.

For more detailed findings, be sure to check out the full Pew Research Center report here.