Whenever anyone talks about speeding up a website, you’ll hear about Content Delivery Networks (aka CDNs).
But what is a CDN and why is it useful?
CDN has become one of the easiest ways to make your website load faster . In fact, all speed checking tools like GT Metrix and Google Page Speed recommend using a good Content Delivery Network (CDN) to improve your website’s performance.
People with a technical background know what a CDN is and the benefits of using a content delivery network. But for non-technical people, the concept may seem foreign.
Well, there is nothing to worry about because in this blog post, I will discuss in depth about content delivery networks and why you should use it.
What is a CDN (also known as a Content Delivery Network)?
Let me start with language that a layman can understand.
We bloggers and website owners usually use shared hosting and all our files are hosted in a data center. For example, my website is hosted on Kinsta hosting and I use a data center in Texas (USA).
Now, when a user opens sidelineplay.com , their request is sent to my data center in Texas, and the files on my site are loaded into the user's browser. Sounds simple, right?
But if the user is farther away from my Texas data center, there will be a lot of higher ping and latency, so the site may take a long time to load.
Nowadays, content delivery networks have data centers in different geographical locations, and when your website uses CDN and a reader or customer opens your website, your files (images, static files, etc.) will be served from the nearest data center of the CDN you use. This reduces ping and latency, and your website is served faster.
This is the first and main benefit of using a CDN.
(Infographic from KeyCDN )
In other words, they use a technique called content replication, where your content is replicated on different servers located in different regions.
A quality **CDN service will have multiple servers in different locations. When you use a content delivery network to serve files for WordPress (or any other website), you actually save your readers’ time and reduce the server load. Now the files will be served by other servers instead of the hosting company.
- Quick Tips to Speed Up Your Website Loading Time
When configuring a CDN, you can upload existing files to the server using either pull or push technology .
Here’s a self-explanatory picture from MaxCDN that explains how this works:
Benefits of using a CDN
There are many immediate benefits to using a CDN:
- Your page speed will improve (and your rankings will improve, too).
- Your readers/clients/customers will be happier.
- You can handle more traffic.
- You will save money on limited bandwidth hosting.
1. Google ranking
Google has clearly stated that page load time is one of the search engine ranking factors. By using a CDN, you will significantly speed up your website.
Additionally, it can help you reduce your bounce rate (which is also good for SEO).
For any website, the faster it loads, the better.
2. More conversions and sales
Since your website loads faster, your readers and customers will be happier.
When customers are satisfied, sales increase.
I bet you’d be extremely frustrated doing business with someone whose website took too long to load.
3. Handle more traffic
Whenever your blog post goes viral, your server gets a lot of traffic. Many times, your website crashes with errors like: “Internal Server Error” or “Database Error”.
With a good content delivery network service, you can easily minimize such downtime, and your website can handle more traffic.
4. Reduce hosting costs
When you use dedicated or VPS hosting or any limited bandwidth hosting, using a CDN will significantly reduce your costs.
CDN is much cheaper than web hosting, and since your files will be served by the CDN servers, you don’t have to worry about the bandwidth costs of web hosting.
If you’re still not convinced and unsure about the benefits of using a CDN, here’s a simple video that explains it all:
There are many free and paid CDN services, such as CloudFlare , Amazon CloudFront , and soon we will also expect Google's own public CDN service.
Regardless of the size of your website, using a content delivery network service will definitely help you improve your website’s loading time and server response speed. For a beginner, the only difficult part is the setup.
To learn how to set up a CDN, check out the following articles:
For more articles about CDN, check out:
So, how many of you are using a CDN, and which one do you use for your WordPress blog? Do you think it is necessary and beneficial for bloggers to use a content delivery network to serve their sites? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
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