The term Content Delivery Network, commonly abbreviated as CDN, is a connection of distributed networks that provide access to webpages and other Internet content to browsers depending on their geographical position, the source of the page, and respective server for content delivery. The primary objective of CDN is to avail web content to users with top availability and maximum performance. To speed up your pages, you are required to integrate CDN with your web hosting.
When visitors come to your page, their searches are guided to your website’s host server. This server is usually located in a central place. What this means is that all the visitors searching your page will have to access the same server. If your site experiences very high traffic, there is a risk of overloading the server and at times even crashing it. Because of this, utilizing CDN technology is a very wise idea to evade these issues. Because it is a network of servers positioned at different locations all over the world, CDN will copy and store your website content.
When users come to your site, the CDN technology will redirect them to the nearest server to get the static content (flash, CSS, images, and JavaScript). Having many CDN servers positioned in different areas globally will make all your pages to load faster from the visitor’s point of view. Therefore, the closer the CDN server is to the visitor’s location, the faster your website pages will load (access to content).
Table of Contents
Why CDN so important for your site?
When you start using CDN servers, there will be a huge impact on your site. Therefore, why exactly is a CDN important? There are very many advantages of applying this technology. They include:
Speed
By utilizing CDN servers, delivery of your website content becomes faster. The traffic on various servers will be low enabling them to deliver your website static content at top speed. The closer a visitor is to the CDN server, the faster the speed of content delivery.
Better user experience
When the content of your website is availed faster, visitors will be more satisfied. Many people dislike having to wait for long periods to get the content they want. Most of them will even avoid such slow pages. Therefore, utilizing CDN technology helps to advance user experience.
Promotes your SEO
Today, Google ranking is based on sites’ speeds. If the page is very fast, it will be ranked higher because Google is built on the premise that user experience is the core goal. If a website is faster, visitors will have better experience. Consequently, Google will rank the page at the top. This comes with additional benefits like elevated traffic levels, better reputation, exposure, and higher conversion rates.
Crash resistance
For websites that receive very high traffic, hosting servers usually crash after overloading. Once the crash has occurred, your page will be out of reach until the page issue is fixed. When you utilize CDN technology, these incidences are reduced. Visitors are redirected to the nearest server, and there will be no problem of overloading or crashing.
Cutting down on expenses
CDN will assist you to cut down on expenses. As opposed to hosting your website in foreign web hosting firms that are usually very pricey, consider using global CDN. The prices are lower, and your web and content will be available all over the world.