Marketers and business owners want to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). The difference between first-page and second-page Google rankings can significantly affect traffic and lead generation. Implementing a strategy that includes CDN and SEO can help you achieve faster speed and improve your Google rankings.
CDN and SEO can help your website reach the first page in Google’s search results. Google ranks and indexes your website faster if you have high-quality content, backlinks, and social signals.
This article highlights how CDN SEO impact your digital marketing strategy. Here are all the CDN SEO tips you need to increase your website speed and enhance your online performance.
Let’s start by looking more into what CDN is and what it does for your website.
What Is a CDN?
A content delivery network or content distribution network (CDN) is a service that delivers web pages faster by providing a global network of servers. It serves web pages from a server close to the person who visited the page.
A server closer to a website visitor will reduce the distance the page must travel across the Internet to reach them, reducing the time a website takes to load.
A CDN can significantly improve the speed of web pages.
How To Maximize the Best CDN Services for Your SEO Strategy
A CDN has a profound effect on your website’s SEO. It optimizes content availability and reduces the time to respond to user requests. It allows you to cache or store a copy of your site assets on its global servers.
A CDN site also ensures quicker content availability due to the asset library. The CDN server automatically optimizes images without affecting their quality and enhances the user experience, and adds to your site’s SEO.
Here are SEO CDN tips to guide you in improving your website ranking:
1. Make sure your CDN is active on your subdomain.
Do you know your SEO value is linked to your CDN provider’s domain?
To install CDN services, you can use the subdomain of the CDN provider. It is also good practice to add a custom domain to your DNS. Your custom domain is your dedicated subdomain that hosts your CDN service.
Most CDN service providers permit the installation of CDN services to your subdomain. The CDN becomes a proprietary service when the provider on your site’s subdomain installs it.
All the SEO value now passes to your root domain, and you can expect increased authority and power for your site.
Your SEO value is not required to be shared with your CDN provider. You can also take advantage of the benefits of installing a CDN, such as faster site loading speeds.
2. Prioritize your target location by using webmaster tools.
You need a target audience to get tangible results from SEO, meaning you should target specific geographic areas with your content.
Your CDN provider will likely use your IP address if you don’t inform Google about your target area. This can affect your SEO performance in the desired location.
It would help if you used Google Webmaster Tool or Bing Webmaster Tool to define your target geographic area.
Also, make sure you adhere to the geo-targeting guidelines provided by these tools. These guidelines will help you achieve better local SEO performance and SEO targeting.
3. Use CDN to define consistent file names and paths.
CDN allows you to host some of the site resources on a CDN server, which will likely alter the path or name of your files.
For example, your page has a gif image, and its path is yoursite.com/asset/image1.gif.
The CDN provider might change the name of this image if you use CDN. It can be named something like: cdn.yoursite.com/assets/image001.gif or cdn.yoursite.com/images/image1.gif.
If the user does not follow the pre-CDN filename, it will display a 404 error, and you may need to redirect them back to their original path.
You will experience delayed response times due to 404 errors or increased redirects. You are also putting your user experience and SEO at risk.
You can avoid such problems by sticking to your original naming conventions.
If your pre-CDN file name is yoursite.com/asset/image1.gif, your post-CDN file name must be cdn.yoursite.com/asset/image1.gif.
This method prevents unwanted 404 errors from being changed and redirects to CDN.
4. Select a secure CDN provider.
You don’t want your site to be slow, but at the same time, you shouldn’t compromise its security for speed.
Most businesses use firewalls and other security standards. Google grants the highest-ranking positions only to secure sites. Fortunately, the right CDN can help improve site security.
Your CDN provider should have the following features:
- Robust hardware and seamless functional scaling.
- Adept at fighting DDoS attacks caused by harmful software.
- Redirects significant amounts of your server traffic to lower the risk of server failure during peak traffic periods.
- Acts as an intermediary between the user request and the server. Any malicious requests are not sent directly to the server if they occur. Therefore, this reduces the risk of the server crashing and getting hacked.
The choice of a reliable and secure CDN is crucial for SEO success.
5. Define the pages you wish to store on CDN.
Google bots and visitors shouldn’t be kept waiting while your website loads. Therefore, setting up the CDN on the correct pages is important.
Although hosting your entire website on CDN for all practical purposes might be tempting, there are better options.
Cache static pages that are most often visited on your website. These pages can be your leading service or product pages that receive high traffic. These are also the pages that are unlikely to see frequent updates.
Hosting these pages on CDN responds faster because they are downloaded from the closest CDN server rather than the main server.
To change the HTTP header, you can specify the time that the CDN will hold these pages.
You can also host other dynamic pages on the main server, such as delivery and payment, to save significant time on site loading.
The Bottom Line
SEO, CDN, and their implementation enable websites to get a chance at ranking on the top spots of the first page of SERPs. Understanding CDN, rankings in Google, and SEO helps marketers and business owners make informed choices for their marketing strategy.
Many CDNs offer essential site optimization features. These include geo routing, image optimization, automatic redirection, and A/B testing.
CDN optimizes page loading times and reduces them significantly. This directly impacts search engine results. Your customers will be able to find your page quicker, spend less time buying your services, and have an easy online experience.
Power your CDN and SEO strategy with ADMS.
Clearwater SEO company Advanced Digital Media Services understands how a CDN works and how it affects SEO and SERPs. A CDN is a cost-effective and easy way to speed up your site and get your images and content indexed quicker if it’s appropriately set up.
Call the team today to learn more about how you can maximize CDN, rankings on SERPs, and other SEO services for your business.
