How a Content Delivery Network (CDN) can help in SEO?
You can improve your website’s SEO by investing in a Content Delivery Network (CDN). CDN can be defined as a network of proxy servers which can connect and provide each other with access to the website traffic coming from each source. Content like images, videos, photos and styled photos, graphics, audio files and HTML/JavaScript/CSS files take up a lot of bandwidth and a longer time to load.
CDN provides greater bandwidth and the content will get multiple routes to reach the user’s computer. This will help to load the website faster and improve SEO. It is much better than using a single server for all your content and delivery needs. A good SEO agency will definitely suggest to implement CDN at some point of your SEO campaign.
If you have created high-quality content then you should also invest in digital assets like a CDN. In case your website loads slowly then using a CDN can help. A CDN can help to improve your website’s performance by optimizing web traffic routes.
These are the points to look into before using a CDN:
1. If there are fluctuations in your website traffic during a few days of the week or particular time of the day then you should pressure-test the CDN during your peak hours. Peak hour performance effectively measures how well a CDN network performs during the busiest times of a website. This will also ensure that the CND will work for you for a long-term.
2. Even though you use a CDN, your content is not loading faster for the end user then there is no need to go for such a CDN provider. The Last-mile and end user DSN response time measures how quickly the website loads for an end user.
3. You should check that your CDN provider offers good connectivity time, low latency and no packet loss. Involve your Tech team or web developer while choosing a reliable CDN.
4. On your CDN control dashboard you can see the Cache hit/miss ratio. If you see a lot of requests returning to the origin then it means that traffic is not reaching your site as required.
5. When you select a CDN you should select the one that can integrate with the API tools and the existing software. You should also check if it can be configured with your future software. This way you can foolproof your investment.
6. You should make sure that the less requested assets are being retrieved from the origin server versus served from the edge. Popular assets are served from the edge. As CDNs are a shared environment you should be aware of the wait time on less popular assets.
7. When you select a CDN provider make sure the provider has a large diverse network. For example, Akamai is the largest CDN provider and serves about 130 countries.
8. The location of your server should meet the needs of the audience now and the new markets you may enter in the future. For example, some countries may have vast server networks while others may not have. You will have to make sure your CDN has enough servers in those areas.
9. The bigger the content to load the more expensive using a CDN will be. For very small websites you can easily optimize each asset manually and you will not require a CDN. For medium and enterprise level websites it may be costly to use a CDN but your work gets done as managing it manually can be inefficient. And you do not lose leads due to slow server response time.
10. Using a modern Cloud CDN can help to improve your website’s speed and protect you against the bad bots and phishing links.
11. The other advantages are guaranteed security features, analytics, user data, distributed data, up-time guarantees, enhanced cache options and more. All this ensures a positive user experience. It can protect your website from Denial-of-Service (DDoS) cyberattacks. It does not matter how large the website is.
12. Websites can be easily integrated with the CDN but for a custom integration you will require a developer.
13. Using a CDN is an extra cost over the hosting and maintenance costs. You will need to budget in case you are using a CDN plan for a long term.
14. Some of the network providers can block the CDN and you should check this out as it can affect page load time. Before selecting a CDN check reviews. Also go with a trial version for a month and then decide whether a CDN meets your requirement. Most Popular ones offer a 30 days money back guarantee.
15. If your CDN uses a third-party geo-mapping database there are chances that the end user may be assigned a wrong IP address. This should be worked out during the set-up process and manually to make sure the CDN is not sending requests through illogical paths.
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