How can you determine what aspect of a strategy is more meaningful than others?

Of course you can.  First, study up and figure out what your approach is going to be.  From there, keep pushing your tactics until you start seeing more results in one area more than others.  Let’s say you start a blog on another site besides yours that is industry specific and suddenly a few weeks into your regular blog posts, you start seeing more traffic that keeps growing.  It’s then you know you’re receiving positive results from that strategy.  Keep pushing.  Although, don’t be so hasty to stop everything else as everything you do will have a positive effect as long as it’s not a black hat tactic.