CDN for SEO (or not)?
-
Does CDN impact on SEO or not?
There seems conflicting ideas as to whether they impact positively or negatively, I realise that if the page loads quicker this is a good thing for SEO and usability of course.
Does Google see CDN as just cheating and a get-around for not doing the work from the ground up and using good hosting etc?
Do you have any direct experience?
All constructive input much appreciated!
-
Thank you, Dirk.
I always enjoy getting explicit answers from people who I have grown to trust.
Thanks!
-
I doubt that Google is seeing using a CDN as cheating - it is one of the factors which helps increasing the speed of the site and increase user experience. It would be an ideal world if you could get a 100% score on Pagespeed Insights and all A scores on webpagetest.org - but you have to start somewhere, and adding a CDN is normally one of the easier things to do. So it's certainly not cheating - rather taking a step in the good direction.
Apart from that, Google is offering a CDN itself (https://cloud.google.com/dns/docs).
rgds,
Dirk
-
Hi Egol,
You can mask the url of the CDN behind your own url - so rather than displaying d3vam04na8c92l.cloudfront.net/imagename.jpg (the example is Cloudfront but it's possible for most CDN's) it could be something like images.mysite.com/imagename.jpg - so links to these pages would still be beneficial to your domain rather than the cdn.
Dirk
-
I like the answer given by Nitin. I agree with the speed benefits and that has tempted me to consider CDNs.
I also have a question to toss out....
Let's imagine that I have a site with very popular images or very popular pdf, ppt, doc, etc files. If those are on my domain then google can easily see that popular images in image search are associated with my domain. Also if people embed my images or hotlink my images or link to my pdf ppt doc, etc files then google can see that activity and popularity is associated with my domain.
Many sites have enormous investments beyond typical webpages. Google does rank pdf ppt doc etc files. They accumulate pagerank and have the ability to pass link benefits. In addition, they can build brand mention popularity, as an example, people can say... "Look at this great photo on egol.com" and that mention, I believe, can provide ranking benefit, advertising value for your domain. If people who find your image or other document instead say... "Look at this great photo on xyz123cdn.com" then that strips those benefits from my domain. It strips type-in traffic from my domain.
Does anyone know of any testing or statements from Google that address how image and information files work when used on CDN.
-
Hi,
Generally, people advice to use CDN for serving static content very fast on your site, that helps you improve your page speed and hence, there it adds value from SEO & UX perspective.
Now, the definition of CDN will help you understand how exactly it can help you improve your page speed. So, here you go:
"A CDN is essentially a network of geographically dispersed servers. Each CDN node (also called Edge Servers) caches the static content of a site like the images, CSS/JS files and other structural components. The majority of an end-user's page load time is spent on retrieving this content, and so it makes sense to provide these "building blocks" of a site in as many server nodes as possible, distributed throughout the world.
When a user requests your site, the node closest in proximity to user will deliver the static content, ensuring the shortest distance for the data to travel (reduced latency), therefore providing the fastest site experience."
Also, check the attached image to understand it well. Hope this helps
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
-
Joomla SEO
With so many articles on the web talking about how difficult Joomla is to work with in regards to SEO, I'm curious as to what techniques / changes you guys make when using Joomla with your SEO / inbound practices? Any extensions that you love? An extensions that you hate?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DougHoltOnline0 -
Django and SEO - Multicountry site - Is Django really SEO friendly?
Hi Everyone, Our client is requesting that we use Django for her project. I am really uneasy about this for several reasons. The client wants a multi-country site that is completely SEO friendly. I love Wordpress and if I had to do this project it would be a Wordpress site with WPML + Yoast plugins site. Questions Is Django SEO friendly and what "plugins" should I be using? Is there a multi-country plugin for Django that keeps or adds typical SEO features? Can you recommend any great articles? Any example sites would be GREATLY appreciated Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
SEO for interior page
Is it possible to be penalized on an interior page but not the whole website? Here's why I ask, I have a page: www.thesandiegocriminallawyer.com/domestic-violence.html that is not ranking well (p. 21 of Google) while the rest of the site ranks well (b/w p.1 to p.3). I checked the link profile in opensiteexplorer, ahrefs, and majesticseo but can't find any problems. I have also checked the HTML code, CSS, keyword optimization, but can't find any problems there either. Can anyone give me insight into why this might be happening? Of course, I'm working under the assumption that this page SHOULD be ranked higher for "San Diego Domestic Violence Attorney" - at least higher than page 21.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
SEO Checklist for eCommerce?
Over the past week or so, my eCommerce site has experienced a large drop in organic traffic from Google.I have used analytics to determine that the pages that have seen the biggest losses in traffic are product pages. I know there are so many seo checklists/site audit checklists out there recommending different things, but does anyone have a good checklist (or link to a good checklist) that would fit our situation best? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gordian0 -
Server cache and SEO
I have a question about server cache and seo. For example. www.chanel.com.cn , the server is in US, and uses China Cache to improve local Chinese users access speed, so what do you think this way will work for search engines spiders too? when a spider is crawlling the website, does the content it crawl on US server or China cache? what's best practice for those kind of SEO on server side? thanks Boson
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | topchinaseo0 -
Web fonts & SEO
Hi everyone ! My question is regarding web fonts. We are currently working on a new design for our website and we're thinking about using web fonts instead of images containing the fonts we'd like to have. I'd like to know if web fonts can affect SEO as they need to be downloaded on the visitor's computers and consequently can slow down the load time of our web pages. If anyone has used web fonts in the past, do you have some specific tips to share ? Thank you in advance for your answers! Jeremie
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Maxxum0 -
Seo for Q&A site
Hi, I am working on a newly launched Q&A site. We have very few questions and users right now and very very low seo traffic. In order to increase the number of users and seo traffic we intend to create a number of pages containing potential questions. Each page would have the following structure: Question. Ex: "What are the top wholesale suppliers of coffee in China?" Some content. Ex: Are you looking for wholesale suppliers of coffee in China? Post your question here? Question form Some additional content So there would be a page for wholesale suppliers of coffee for every country. We would publish the pages gradually and the content would be unique but yet similar (ex: only the Country changes). What do you think about this approach? Is it a good idea or can it be dangerous? We don't want to incur in any kind of penalization, we just want to give the possibility to people who are looking for specific information to find us and be able to post the request on our website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ypsilon0 -
SEO from Godaddy How Good is it?
http://www.godaddy.com/search-engine/seo-services.aspx?ci=44163 it said "Includes Standard Search Engine Visibility to Improve Search Rankings" it begs for question... Search Engine Visibility??? Improve SERP?!?!!? is it really that good? O.o; or have i successfully been eaten my promotional messages? Can anyone with experience with them share some information with me ? 🙂 (The price tag is mighty interesting)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IKT0