Proper CDN Implementation
-
I am working with a site that is using the Cloudflare CDN to deliver their images. The problem is that the URLs for the images are all cloudflare URLs (cloudflare.com/example-filename.png). We want to use a cname to change the image URLs to be on a subdomain of their site to take advantage of the SEO strength.
Currently, they get a high percentage of traffic from image search and Google is directing users to their site when returning images hosted on Cloudflare, so I am apprehensive about making changes. I'm curious if anyone has any experience with this or has any insight on how Google will handle it.
Will the longer term benefits out way any short term drop in traffic from image search? WIll there be a drop in image search?
Any thoughts or experiences are appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
-
Hi Lisa
This is interesting.
As far as I can tell, everything is configured 100% correctly.
Few questions:
1. Do you keep all images in /sites/default/files/?
Were all (most) of your errors related to items using that path?2. This could be a downtime issue. Did you experience any availability problems?
3. Do you see any changes in the error report? (different results for the same URL)
If so, this makes my downtime theory more plausible.Also, the site loaded VERY slowly for me.
I've run Google Page speed and saw that you have issue with Cache headers (low expiration date that makes it harder to leverage local and CDN caching capabilities)
This should be looked at. Beyond the immediate ux and seo implications, this can contribute to server load and can be have a negative effect on website's availability. (i.e. the above mentioned downtime)
Best
Igal
-
Igal-
Related question. We just moved to a CDN for our images. Our site is www.mnn.com and our CDN is http://images.mnn.com/. The only thing we’re allowing Google to crawl are the images, so we shouldn’t have any duplicate content issues.
However, what I AM seeing is several thousand warnings in Google Webmaster Tools for our video sitemap. Our video sitemap contains about 618 videos, but we have 2,472 errors citing “Sitemap contains urls which are blocked by robots.txt” which I believe is related to the video icons in search.
When I look for a video in Google, I still see our icons related. I can’t seem to figure this one out.
Any thoughts?
Lisa
-
I`ve recently covered this in a blog post about SEO & CDN Myth busting. The short answer is "No", as Google is well aware of CDN structures.
I think the image traffic drop is un-related and it may have something to do with Bot Blocking features that prevent access from Google Image bot (which, as we recently discovered, can use non-US IPs and thus may also be considered as "fake" ).Having said that, Google official statement says that speed factors only affect 1% of SERP results. If your image traffic is high or/and valuable I would re-think this.
-
The typical way of doing this is to setup a subdomain, specifically for the content that is going to be served from a CDN, and then use a CNAME to map the ugly CDN url to the clean subdomain that you setup. I've only done this with Rackspace and AWS. If you want a good description of how this is done on AWS, see this link:
http://www.labnol.org/internet/setup-content-delivery-network-with-amazon-s3-cloudfront/5446/
Apparently, cloudflare has a way to map your website url to the CDN, as long as you're hosting with a cloud server system that they support. I haven't tried this before, but it might actually be a cleaner way of doing this, if you're hosting setup supports it.
http://blog.cloudflare.com/zone-apex-naked-domain-root-domain-cname-supp
It sounds like this would be a big win for your client, as they get a large percentage of traffic from image traffic. Using a CDN service is going to improve the speed of loading images and reduce their bandwidth bill, and mapping the CNAME should give their domain the credit for being the source of the image.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to properly spin off a subdivision of an existing company?
An existing client of mine is the parent of a subsidiary. The parent business currently drives traffic for the subsidiary and has been doing so for many years. The subsidiaries owner is wanting to create their own website even though the companies are still in great relationships. So I'm wanting to make sure they don't compete. What necessary steps do I need to take? My one major issue is the address. They both work under the same address and I plan on using a suite number for the subsidiary. Will that work? Even though the parent company doesn't priortize it's subsidary business for SEO, I don't want to drop in rankings and for them to compete. Any knowledge or insight on this would be greatly appreciated! The more details the better 🙂 Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rzettle25250 -
Different ways to implement schema markup?
Hey guys, What are all the ways you can implement schema markup Plugins (e.g. wordpress, shopify) Google data highlighter in GSC Google Structured Data Markup Helper Google Tag Manager Also is google data highlighter different to Google Structured Data Markup Helper? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | michel_80 -
How To Implement Pagination Properly? Important and Urgent!
I have seen many instructions but I am still uncertain. Here is the situation We will be implementing rel prev rel next on our paginted pages. The question is: Do we implement self referencing canonical URL on the main page and each paginated page? Do we implement noindex/follow meta robots tag on each paginated page? Do we include the canonical URL for each paginated page in the sitemap if we do not add the meta robots tag? We have a view all but will not be using it due to page load capabilities...what do we do with the viewl all URL? Do we add meta robots to it? For website search results pages containing pagination should we just put a noindex/follow meta robots tag on them? We have seperate mobile URL's that also contain pagination. Do we need to consider these pages as a seperate pagination project? We already canonical all the mobile URL's to the main page of the desktop URL. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seo320 -
Using a US CDN (Cloudflare) for a UK Site. Should I use a UK Based CDN as it says my server is based in USA
Hi All, We are a UK Company with Uk customers only and use CloudFlare CND. Our Site is hosted by a UK company with servers here but from looking online and checking where my site is hosted etc etc , some sites are telling me the name of our UK Hosted company and other sites are telling me my site is hosted in San Fran (USA) , where I presume the Cloudflare is based. I know Cloudflare has a couple of servers in the UK it uses but given all my customers are UK based ,I don't want this is affect rankings etc , as I thought it was a ranking benefit to be hosted in the country you are based. Is there any issue with this and should I change or is google clever enough to know so i shouldn't worry. thanks Pet
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Implementation of structured data = a significant drop in positions in the results
Hi friends,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zkouska
In one of our websites (ecommerce) with the implementation of structured data we noticed a significant drop in positions in the results.
Does anyone have a similar experience? Thanks... 🙂0 -
Two pages on same domain - Is this a proper use of the canonical tag?
I have a domain with two pages in question--one is an article with 2,000 words and the other is a FAQ with 300 words. The 300 word FAQ is copied, word-for-word and pasted inside of the 2,000 word article. Would it be a proper use of the canonical tag to point the smaller, 300 word FAQ at the 2,000 word article? Since the 300 word article is identical to a portion of the 2,000 word article, will Google see this as duplicate content? Thanks in advance for any helpful insight.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andrewv0 -
What is the best route SEO wise for implementing a Wordpress blog that has a domain under go daddy and hosting under a third party like Kalio Commerce?
I am currently trying to implement a Blog on a Ecommerce site that has its domain set up under Go Daddy, but it is hosted under a platform called Kalio Commerce. I am trying to implement a Wordpress blog because I am most familiar with it and believe it offers more strength SEO wise but the Ecommmerce platform by Kalio does not offer the ability to install Wordpress or any CMS platform other than its own. I am stuck wondering if I could find a way to either implement a blog through a sub-folder (mydomain.com/blog) while using wordpress on hosting added to the go daddy server under their domain. If Kalio Commerce doesn't have any way of adding a blog to its own hosting is this hindering my clients ability to be fully optimized for fresh content? Now I am not too familiar with adding sub-domains with hosting under a different platform. I am more in tune with building a wordpress ecommerce site and implementing blogs under the wordpress structure. This is a leap for me and it is getting to be a little overwhelming so if any one has prior experience with this please let me know if I can find a way through this without putting my SEO consulting at risk. So far I have gotten to the conclusion that I can set up hosting for the companies site under Go Daddy even though they have their hosting under Kalio. If I am to set up hosting under Go Daddy would this cause the DNS routing to be compromised. If this is so must I set up hosting under a separate domain (myotherdomian.com) and have Kalio set up a Sub-Folder like so (mydomain.com/blog) and just have the DNS of the blog installed on (myotherdomain.com) point to the folder in Kalio hosting for mydomain.com? So now that I explained my situation, what is the best route SEO wise for implementing a Wordpress blog that has a domain under go daddy and hosting under a third party like Kalio Commerce?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cscoville0 -
H1 tag proper uses
Ok I see this happening all of the time. I get my hands on a new website and there are one of four header tag issues: 1. There are no H1 tags at all 2. There are multiple H1 tags on the same page 3. Every page has an identical H1 tag 4. Header tags are used all out of order Do any of these have a negative impact on rankings? I've always tried to get one H1 tag on each page, have it be the first header tag, and make it unique to each page. Is this a waste of itme? Could improper header tag use hurt a website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DanDeceuster1