Boost your business with CDNs

Google prioritises user experience. One thing people care about when they brows websites is the speed. As Google explicitly states in their Google Search Central Blog "we're obsessed with speed", the importance of site speed cannot be overstated. Whether your website makes it to the first page on the Google search result page partly depends on site speed.

To stand out in the competitive game of SEO, page speed optimization is thus the key. CDNs can effectively accelerate the speed at which your webpage components load. In this blogpost, we'll explore the ways how CDNs can improve SEO rankings.

To begin with, what is SEO? Why should you care about it? Search engine optimization, SEO, is a crucial digital marketing strategy that focuses on improving a website's visibility and organic search rankings on search engine results pages. It involves optimizing both technical and content aspects of a website, such as its structure, HTML coding, site speed, and words used in it, to make it more search engine-friendly.

The goal of SEO is to increase organic traffic and attract relevant visitors to a website by appearing higher in search engine rankings. This is achieved through keyword research, on-page optimization, off-page optimization, link building, and other techniques. By implementing effective SEO practices, businesses can enhance their online presence, reach a wider audience, and ultimately drive more valuable traffic to their websites.

CDNs can be a useful tool to web owners when they try to improve the search rankings of their websites, because CDNs can boost the speed of website pages. But what is a CDN exactly?

What is a CDN?

Like SEO, the term CDN is an abbreviation. A CDN, or content delivery network, is a network of cache servers that are spread across the world. The content of a webpage can be cached on those servers and be delivered to users who are located in areas that are close to the servers. This does not sound like much, but shortening the physical distance between the site where the data is stored and the end user makes the difference.

How can a CDN help your SEO rankings?

One of the results of using is faster page load times and reduced network congestion. Additionally, CDNs help mitigate traffic spikes and handle high volumes of concurrent requests by distributing the load across multiple servers. Imagine someone is viewing your website and when a pic on the webpage is not loading, the browser is likely to click on the x button. To search engines, this is a red flag. With CDNs, this kind of problem can be avoided.

Another way a CDN can help your website's SEO performance is that it usually comes with SSL, providing extra website security. SSL/TLS protection is something search engines, like Google, take into consideration.

In other words, a CDN can improve the user experience and, therefore, have a positive impact on SEO rankings.

📚 Further reading: What is a CDN & how can it help you?

Now you know how a CDN can be utilized to improve your website's rankings, you might want to try your hand at it. Before you start using CDNs carefully consider your infrastructure needs, technical expertise, and budget as well as the desired outcome beforehand. One of the things to consider is which CDN provider to choose. There are many different providers; some provide only CDN services and some are cloud service providers. They each have their own pros and cons.

CDN providers focus on CDN services, developing advanced CDN technologies, such as smart routing and file compression, whereas cloud providers highlight the ability to integrate other cloud services with CDN.

CDN providers

• CloudFlare
• Akami
• KeyCDN
• StackPath
• CDN77

CDN services by cloud providers

• AWS CloudFront
• Azure
• Google Cloud
• Hauwei
• Tenscent
• Alibaba

You might also have heard of the term DCDN. What does it mean? Is it different from CDN?

Dynamic route for CDN, or DCDN, is a service by some cloud providers that specifically accelerates the delivery of dynamic content. Like CDN, DCDN can also be used to help you achieve your SEO goals.

However, does that mean that CDN cannot increase the speed of delivery of dynamic content? Not necessarily. Some CDN providers include the acceleration of dynamic content as part of their CDN services, while some have different names for static content and dynamic content acceleration solutions. As a result, when evaluating CDN services offered by different providers, make sure you are clear about your needs and what services are included.

💡 Static content vs dynamic content?! Static content refers to fixed web pages that remain unchanged until manually updated, such as standard information pages like "About Us." In contrast, dynamic content is interactive and responsive, adapting based on user input or real-time data. Examples of dynamic content include social media feeds, e-commerce product recommendations, and weather updates. In short, static content does not change, whereas dynamic content adjusts to provide personalized and up-to-date experiences.

As a leading cloud solution provider, Hi Cloud collaborates with major industry players such as Azure, AWS, Google, Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei and CloudFlare to deliver top-tier CDN services. Discover more about our comprehensive CDN offerings or get in touch with our team of cloud experts to schedule a complimentary consultation today.