What is a CDN
A CDN (for “Content Delivery Network”) is an infrastructure of networked servers that are strategically located around the world. They serve to shorten the physical distance between the content’s original hosting location and the site visitor’s location. This, in order to minimize the delay between the sending of the request by the Internet user and the complete loading of the page on their terminal. Here are some pointers on what a CDN is and how to consider it in your SEO strategy.
Why choose a CDN
With servers dispersed around the world, your customers can benefit from faster load times and less bandwidth capacity utilization. As an operator, you also have considerable advantages by using a content delivery network. The load on your web server lightens by the redirection of requests. Also, the security of the data buffer increases.
What is a CDN: Simultaneous download
The principle of simultaneous downloading is another undeniable advantage of the CDN. Indeed, it is possible to download elements simultaneously on different servers. This is less obvious if all your resources are in the same place. You may indeed be limited by the bandwidth of your server. When a visitor sends a request to display your web page, the CDN allows them to download the resources that are cached; it downloads at the same time the elements that are not cached.
International SEO
An obvious benefit of the CDN is related to the improvement of the page loading time, this criterion being taken into account by search engines. But the use of a CDN also brings a gain in terms of international SEO. When using a CDN, the associated IP address is a non-localized IP address. The search engine will locate the hosting of the site at the location of the POP that delivers the content. The criterion of location of the IP being taken into account by search engines, this will ensure an optimized SEO in areas near the POP.
CDNs for content owners
Content and application owners, including e-commerce sites, media outlets and cloud companies, use CDNs to improve their customers’ experience, reduce abandonment rates, increase ad impressions, improve conversion rates and strengthen customer loyalty. Using a content delivery network can also improve Web security, for example by helping to absorb and mitigate a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.
Remember: CDNs improve the user experience because they increase the performance of web services.