There are tons of tools and services out there that can speed up your website. So why choose a content delivery network? It’s simple, CDN actually works.
For those of you who don’t know what a content delivery network is or do not remember precisely, let me explain: CDN is a network of servers spread all around the world, each server contains copies of content from your site (videos, images, software, etc.) so that when a visitor accesses your site, this content loads from a closer server.
Speed
Since the content is available from a closer server, it loads much faster everywhere. Furthermore, most CDN providers now also offer HTTP/2 together with the CDN service, which speeds the site up even more.
Unlike HTTP/1.1 which is textual, the new HTTP/2 is binary.
Additional improvements are server push, better requests handling, and generally, the way data is modified and transported with header compression. You can read more about HTTP/2 here or check out the demo of HTTP/2.
Security
Most CDNs also provide an SSL certificate for your site and usually take care of the renewal process too. With CND and the Let’s Encrypt technology, you can obtain a free unshared certificate in a couple of seconds by default. That way you can secure your website without any effort.
It Prevents Origin Crash
CDN generally saves your web hosting server as the traffic is split amongst several CDN edge servers, which soothes traffic peaks whenever they occur so that your origin server never crashes. This also saves you some expenditures.
Better User Experience
Nobody likes to wait. Fast and smooth loading makes your users feel more comfortable. Your goal should be to make your site as enjoyable as possible to provide the best user experience (UX).
Lower Bounce Rate
Speed also influences the bounce rate. If your site runs at light speed, people are more likely to stay. You can read about some experiments smart people from Google did about the impact of speed on the bounce rate here.
SEO Improvements
Google considers bounce rate and loading speed among the parameters for evaluating the site’s relevance in web rankings as well as SSL security.
Price
There are numerous CDN that has one of the lowest and most transparent pricing (like – KeyCDN, MaxCDN, and Cloudflare).
The Pay As You Go plan has no commitments, you only pay for what you use. Compare the pricing in detail before you pick one.
Why Not When it’s Easy and You Can Try it
The last reason is simple and speaks for itself. Why not?
You can try the services and see yourself if CDN can help to improve your site. Moreover when the setup takes literally just a few minutes.
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