Time Is Relative!
No matter the industry, the one common goal of all business websites is delivering an excellent user experience.
A website that runs smoothly and offers a memorable experience will often turn these viewers into repeat visitors.
Accordingly, one of the most significant factors which impacts user experiences is page load times.
Internet users and online buyers are a notoriously impatient bunch. Surfers do not like to wait for slow websites to load. Often, if they come across a site that is loading too slowly, they quickly click onto the next site.
For sites that wish to retain visitors and increase conversions, fast load times are a vital trait.
Fast websites result in happier users who are more likely to stay and engage with your content for longer. Moreover, loading speeds can impact your search index rankings.
Site speed is one of the main elements of Google’s SEO ranking algorithm and the faster your site, the higher you are likely to rank. The opposite is also true. Slow websites often frustrate visitors who do not stick around for long. This demonstrates to Google that people are less interested in your content, placing downward pressure on a site’s search ranking.
One of the ways to improve page load times is employing a content delivery network (CDN). A CDN is a network of different servers located in different geographical areas as opposed to a single server.
When a visitor clicks on a website, the CDN gets the information from the server that is closest to them geographically.
Due to its structure, users can receive static content much faster with a CDN. This is accomplished by shortening the distance information travels from server to user.
There are other ways by which a CDN delivers faster content. One is by storing different content types such as images, JavaScript, stylesheets, web fonts, and audio files. By storing these elements, CDNs can deliver the content to users much more efficiently.
CDNs also use less bandwidth because the content comes from multiple servers in different geographical locations. Less bandwidth translates to faster speeds, and for businesses responsible for paying for hosting bandwidth, this can eventually translate to reduced costs.
Summing Up CDNs
The benefits of employing a CDN are numerous. Between faster loading speeds helping boost search rankings and enabling more frequent crawling, CDNs can help Google quickly recognize any changes and updates to a site, leading to improved traffic retention and delivering better search results.
