Updated On: 2021-11-28
Referred to as: CDN
Category: Technical SEO
Correct Use: Configure DNS to be managed by CDN provider.
Description:
A CDN or content delivery network has been one of the more significant and impactful developments in web technology.
You won’t notice that you are using it and that’s the beauty of it.
A CDN = Content Delivery Network
A CDN does a lot – its a very powerful technology and you should be using it on your site.
A CDN makes optimized copies of all different screen sizes and device combos and makes them available at local nodes so a requesting device can get the best-optimized version of your site delivered very quickly.
This helps deal with a lot of issues that your site may have and provides a better user experience.
Our take: CDN’s have been a major advance in web technology in recent years. With growing device and screen types and multiple different formats and versions of a site, a CDN provides a very efficient way to serve all possible device combinations across the web. A CDN is arguably not a specific SEO technique or technology but it is highly related to the intertwined disciplines of UX / CRO and overall page experience.
Do: Use a decent CDN, we are big fans of Cloudflare.
Don’t: leave your site to statically serve all of its content and lag behind competitors.
Tip: Configure your domain to allow Cloudflare to manage it for you and handle all of the CDN requirements.
Introduced:
CDN’s have been in existence since the late 1990s but they didn’t really go on supercharge until around 2008 with Amazon’s CDN. Here is a great article on the chronology of CDNs and when major advancements were introduced.
What Google Says:
Google has its own Cloud CDN – so its fair to say Google supports this technology wholeheartedly.