What Is Content Delivery Network (CDN) SEO? Best Practices & Tips

In the search engine optimization industry, we often face the question: Should I host a website (or parts of it) on a CDN?

If you are looking for answers, read on.

What’s A CDN?

CDN stands for Content Delivery Network. It’s a hosting/delivery solution that helps serve content faster than a traditional server.

A CDN is a network of servers set in diverse geographic locations designed to provide content to (nearby) internet users quickly and efficiently.

Because a CDN server is located closer to the end user than a typical website hosting server, the distance between server and client (i.e., content and browser) is shortened, and content is delivered faster.

CDN servers store copies of content at numerous strategically located data centers around the globe. So, each time there’s a user request for a particular piece of content, it’s delivered from the nearest CDN server.

What Does A CDN Do?

CDNs cache static content files (like HTML, CSS, Javascript, images, etc.) that remain the same for every user. Because this type of content is not dynamically generated, all users actually see the same files.

So, these files are cached in different CDN servers around the world and can get to users really fast, minimizing latency.

Latency is the amount of time a server needs to respond to a request, which significantly affects page load time. Utilizing a content delivery network lets you ‘move’ the server closer to the users.

What Are The Benefits Of Using A CDN?

There are many things a CDN can help you with, but most people use it to reduce latency and speed up load times.

So, to elaborate, here are the main benefits of a CDN:

Reduces Server Load Time

Because the content delivery network uses many servers cleverly located worldwide, the main server is at less risk of being overloaded.

Improves Site Speed And Performance

Fast page load speed accounts for fewer bounces and a better user experience. For many businesses, like e-commerce brands, it also prevents lost revenue due to delays.

Provides Valuable Audience Insights

Today, using a CDN is a widespread practice. Recent statistics show that 31% of websites worldwide use CDN technology to deliver content to their users via giant CDN providers like Amazon, Google, and CloudFlare (and countless smaller ones.)

So, inevitably, CDNs collect vast amounts of user data, including device type, real-time load statistics, most active areas, asset popularity, etc.

All these translate into valuable statistics that businesses can use to optimize their website further and, as a result, raise sales.

Decreases Network Latency

Thanks to CDN, information ‘packets’ do not move through large distances and devices before reaching the end user. Thus, no packets get ‘lost’ or delayed on the way.

Content is delivered fast, maintaining its original quality - vital in live streaming, high-definition video/audio, etc.

Enhances Website Security

By ‘nature,’ CDNs do not face server overloads. This creates a fence against website attacks - especially DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attacks where the attacker sends large volumes of traffic and overwhelms a DNS server.

Lowers Operational Costs

Because CDNs offer cached content, the origin server doesn’t have to serve the same content over and over again. So, website hosting charges (calculated based on the amount of data that gets transferred, aka. bandwidth) are significantly reduced.

Does CDN Affect SEO?

In most cases, CDN enhances SEO - if set up right. Here is how:

1. Site speed is improved

2. Security is enhanced (by forcing a secure HTTPS, for example)

3. User experience gets better

But take care: always contact your CDN provider for set-up instructions so you don't end up destroying your SEO.

And once your CDN is up and running, conduct regular checks to ensure everything works according to SEO principles.

Best Practices For Content Delivery Network (CDN) SEO

There are many things to consider when dealing with the impact of CDN on SEO. Here are the fundamentals:

1. Use Your Own Subdomain

This is core to CDN SEO. In your DNS setup, make sure you create a subdomain, e.g., cdn.mysite.com, which you’ll use as a CNAME. If you don’t do that, your CDN service will take place on your provider’s subdomain, for example: mysite.cdn.com

By keeping the service proprietary to you, you reap the fruits of all the SEO value of your CDN-based resources, which translates into higher domain authority and rankings.

2. Utilize Webmaster Tools To Your Advantage

Via the Google Webmaster Tools or Bing Webmaster Tools, you can inform search engines of your target location. This is a critical step, especially if your CDN's IP address is outside your target country.

In this way, you automatically prevent search engines from targeting a different geographical location.

Plus, the webmaster’s URL removal tool helps you identify and prevent unwanted URLs from being indexed - or remove them if they are indexed already. Part of technical SEO, this technique enables you to utilize your crawl budget to your advantage.

3. Keep The Same File Name Paths

To avoid unnecessary redirects, you must keep the same file naming conventions you had before the CDN.

Not doing so can result in unnecessary 404 errors - a critical error in search engine optimization.

4. Use Rel Canonical On CDN Hosted Pages

When you host all your web pages on a CDN, you must use rel canonical tags to avoid duplicate content issues.

And there’s a good reason behind it.

If you host your entire website on CDN, you will have pages like: mysite.com/services and its CDN equivalent: cdn.mysite.com/services - both targeting the same page.

By using rel=canonical tags, you can mark the original page (mysite.com/services) as canonical of the CDN page (cdn.mysite.com/services).

And remember: You should implement rel=canonical tags in all the pages hosted on the CDN server.

This practice enhances your SEO efforts and tells search engines to index the original pages. So, you keep your entire SEO value and link equity intact.

SEO, CDN & Profitability

Combining professional SEO with a fast and reliable CDN service lets you get the most out of your website and search engine optimization efforts.

At Atropos Digital, we leverage technology to offer you state-of-the-art SEO and CRO services, aiming at increased visibility and profitability. Ready to find out more? Book a strategy call.