How a CDN Can Improve Website Performance

The speed of your website and its responsiveness is far more important than you might think. In fact, the speed and functionality of a website directly influences your search engine rankings. Moreover, the responsiveness of your site greatly determines visitor loyalty. In some cases, if you have a slow or unpredictable site, visitors will distrust your site. Because of the sheer importance site speed has on site rankings and visitor loyalty, one of the most important elements of website management is consistently working to optimize website speed. As millions of website administrators have already discovered, a CDN is among the most effective ways to improve website performance and functionality.

What is a CDN?

A CDN, which stands for Content Delivery Network, is essentially a connection of servers dispersed throughout the world. Every CDN node, which is also referred to as Edge Servers, caches the structural components of your website. When a visitor logs into your site, the CDN server closest to the end-user distributes these structural components, which significantly reduces loading time.

Defined as next-generation optimization, a Content Delivery Network is quickly becoming an essential tool within the arsenal to outrank competitors and increase sales, traffic, and ultimately, profitability.

Why Use a CDN?

As mentioned earlier, the main reason why you should adopt a CDN for your website is to dramatically enhance the end-users experience when accessing and navigating throughout your site. Because speed and performance consistency is imperative for all users, working with a CDN can not only improve overall user experiences but also enhance your rankings among search engines.

CDN Implementation

While certain website hosting providers are equipped with their own network of CDN servers, the majority of these services are provided by third-party vendors. Thankfully, implementing a CDN is extremely easy. In fact, it typically only requires you to tell the vendor what elements of your site need to be mirrored and then the rest of the work is automatically completed. If you use a CMS, such as WordPress or Drupal, you can easily install plugins to effortlessly begin the CDN process.

The cost of a CDN can significantly range based upon the size and scope of your website. Enterprise websites generally cost the most while small-to-medium websites are quite affordable. Other elements that determine the overall cost of a Content Delivery Network include: region reach, security needs and bandwidth.

In order to find the best deal for your own unique needs, itís important to compare at least three CDN vendors and determine which ones are not only the most cost-effective, but also provide you with necessary service levels.

Sources: http://webhostingprof.com & https://www.incapsula.com/cdn-guide/what-is-cdn-how-it-works.html

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