Along with upgrad­ing to WordPress 4.0 today, the lat­est ver­sion of Yoast’s Google Analytics plu­g­in was released with sup­port for Universal track­ing. With every­thing updat­ed and squared away, I took a look at some of the num­bers and decid­ed to share. Click on any chart for a larg­er, eas­i­er to read version.

The Last Month Year over Year

My first snap­shot was a quick look at August 1st — 31st of 2014 and com­pare that to 2013. Over the last month, I’ve launched a redesign and been giv­ing my site more atten­tion as part of my move to free­lanc­ing and being my own boss. With 79% more peo­ple com­ing to my site, I feel great about the growth.

But What Content Are They Reading?

Well, their not read­ing the new stuff. Darn. My most pop­u­lar con­tent for the month of August 2014 is older list-style posts that show­case type­faces. These image heavy posts rank well in Google Image search for a wide range of typo­graph­i­cal search terms. The home­page does make a strong show­ing at num­ber two; a free­bie rounds out the top ten. Next ques­tion, does August fit in with what peo­ple have been look­ing at on SpareType this year? The next table is top pages from January 1st, 2014 — August 31st, 2014.

Yep, the trend con­tin­ues. The images are dri­ving a bulk of search traf­fic for sin­gle page views. Readers then bounce on out­bound links to where they can buy the fonts. It’s also good to see my free­bie resources in the top ten views for the year. Combined they’ve been down­loaded 491 times.

Year to Date

To fin­ish up this lit­tle peek at the num­bers, I decid­ed to look at January 1st, 2014 — August 31st, 2014 and com­pare it to that same time peri­od last year.

Again, improve­ment with more new users vis­it­ing the site. Pages per ses­sion and ses­sion dura­tion aren’t great though. It would be nice if peo­ple stuck around and checked the site out a bit. I guess that’s what every web­site owner would like though.

My take­away from glanc­ing at the num­bers is to keep mak­ing con­tent. I need to release more design resources. I need to keep pub­lish­ing posts and build­ing value. People are read­ing — or at least look­ing — at my web­site. I’m not shout­ing into empty space. That’s a good feeling.

What do you think?

Are these num­bers bad / good / meh? Am I read­ing them upside down or inter­pret­ing them wrong? Is there a met­ric you’re curi­ous about that I did­n’t cover? I’d love to hear from all 1479 users who stopped by SpareType last month.