Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Does a CDN affect search rankings?
-
I feel kind of stupid asking this, but if i use one it would speed things up quite a bit. It is for a ecommerce website, any guidance on this would be awesome!
-
Google officially said the site speed is a SEO factor which, when implemented, will affect 1% of SERP results. This gives some idea of the scope of it's relevancy. (not saying 1% is either high or low, this is all very subjective)
Having said that, beyond speed improvement, CDN provides other SEO related benefits.
I've actually just published a 2-part Blog post that investigates SEO & CDN related myths and talks about CDN and SEO benefits, I hope you`ll find it useful. it should answer all questions:
Part 1: SEO & CDN Myths
Part 2: SEO & CDN benefits -
I use a CDN and have never seen any impact on my SEO. As long as your HTML is served off your domain you're fine.
If you're using AWS Cloudfront you can set up a CNAME so that your content comes from, say, images.mydomain.com instead of xyz.cdn.com. Helps obscure it from visitors and looks a bit neater.
-
Using a properly configured CDN will not have any negative effects on SEO. It can have positive effects on your rankings by offering faster page loads.
With Google's current system, you would not see a SEO benefit per se. If your current site is deemed slow by Google, you could have your current speed penalty lifted.
Moving to a CDN will surely provide a better user experience. Google is constantly adjusting it's algorithms in chase of the best user experience, so this is a chance for you to get ahead of the game. It is reasonable to think in the future Google may consider site speed as a ranking factor.
Two other suggestions regarding setting up a CDN:
-
you need to be very conscious of your cache settings. You could make a change on your site and users will not see the change if you do not ensure that change is propagated throughout your CDN
-
try to include all files which would benefit from a CDN. I have seen some sites just add their videos and image files to the CDN. Custom Javascript, CSS files and so forth can all benefit from CDN. PageSpeed and YSlow are two great tools for optimizing page loading times.
-
-
As far as I know, the urls of your additional resources such as images, css, and scripts shouldn't affect your SEO either way.
-
But, does the use of a Content Delivery Network (cdn) itself affect seo? For example my pics / code will be hosted differently. Just kind of confusing to me since I'm used to URL structure being: mydomain.com/images/pic.jpg instead of xyz.cdn.com/2523/myname/pic.jpg. Is this even something to be concerned about?
-
Site speed is only relevant when your site is extremely slow. Google doesn't penalize you unless your page load time is excessively long. You won't get a boost in rankings by speeding up your site.
With that in mind, Site load times do affect your user experience, so you may notice a lower bounce rate, more pages per visit, and possibly a higher conversion rate.
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
-
Website ranking declined after connecting to CDN
Hi! We are trying to rank https://windowmart.ca for various local search terms. Our head office is in Edmonton where we try to rank https://windowmart.ca/edmonton-windows-doors/ for such terms as "windows Edmonton", "replacement windows Edmonton", "windows and doors Edmonton" as well as others. The website was the leader in its niche for around 2 years. Then we've got some server related issues, moved to a new server and connected CDN Nitropack that really improved our google speed test results. Recently we noticed that our rankings started to drop. Do you know if Nitropack can negatively effect local SEO rankings? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | vaskrupp0 -
Hide sitelinks from Google search results
Does anyone have any recommendations on how you can tell Google (hopefully via a URL) not to index that page of a website? I have tried through SEO Yoast to hide certain sitemaps (which has worked to a degree) but certain functionalities of Wordpress websites show links without them actually being part of a "sitemap" so those links are harder to hide. I'm having an issue with one of my websites - the sitelinks that Google is suggesting are nowhere near the most popular pages and I know that you can't make recommendations through Google not to show certain pages through Search Console. anymore. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated! Thanks!
Technical SEO | | MainstreamMktg0 -
Indexed, but not shown in search result
Hi all We face this problem for www.residentiebosrand.be, which is well programmed, added to Google Search Console and indexed. Web pages are shown in Google for site:www.residentiebosrand.be. Website has been online for 7 weeks, but still no search results. Could you guys look at the update below? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | conversal0 -
Image Search
Hello Community, I have been reading and researching about image search and trying to find patterns within the results but unfortunately I could not get to a conclusion on 2 matters. Hopefully this community would have the answers I am searching for. 1) Watermarked Images (To remove or not to remove watermark from photos) I see a lot of confusion on this subject and am pretty much confused myself. Although it might be true that watermarked photos do not cause a punishment, it sure does not seem to help. At least in my industry and on a bunch of different random queries I have made, watermarked images are hard to come by on Google's images results. Usually the first results do not have any watermarks. I have read online that Google takes into account user behavior and most users prefer images with no watermark. But again, it is something "I have read online" so I don't have any proof. I would love to have further clarification and, if possible, a definite guide on how to improve my image results. 2) Multiple nested folders (Folder depth) Due to speed concerns our tech guys are using 1 image per folder and created a convoluted folder structure where the photos are actually 9 levels deep. Most of our competition and many small Wordpress blogs outrank us on Google images and on ALL INSTANCES I have checked, their photos are 3, 4 or 5 levels deep. Never inside 9 nested folders.
Technical SEO | | Koki.Mourao
So... A) Should I consider removing the watermark - which is not that intrusive but is visible?
B) Should I try to simplify the folder structure for my photos? Thank you0 -
Why is my site jumping around in google search ?
Hi I've been trying to get my page up in google results and I was wondering why the constant fluctuation. For example, on one day the pages is nr. 26, the next day it's nr. 65 then jumps back on say 30 and then in a few more days it's going back to 50. What's the logic behind that ? Thanks Cezar
Technical SEO | | sparts1 -
How to search HTML source for an entire website
Is there a way for me to do a "view source" for an entire website without having to right-click every page and select "view source" for each of them?
Technical SEO | | SmartWebPros0 -
Bing rank drop off for multiple sites
Hi Mozzers, Seeing some wacky stuff going on on some sites I manage. In more than a few, the ranking on bing has dropped basically overnight from page one spots to not being found on the first 100 positions. Anyone else seeing similar results? Some of the sites are fairly new, some have been around for ages, some are wordpress, some are not. I've been searching for some news of a big change on bing, but keep reading about bing dropping the thin sites during black friday. In one example, I had the site set up in BWT for a while, and had a look at the data. The reports show that the pages are crawled, the index summary shows pages indexed, and there seems to be no crawl errors, but rankings are absolutely gone. Also, I can't see the sites in bing if I search "site:example.com" in bing. Here's 2 examples, the first would make sense since it's pretty thin as I havent added much content yet: http://homewindowtint.org but this one doesn't make sense to me. Sure there's a few errors, but to be dropped like a rock seems weird http://www.ahmedandsukaram.com
Technical SEO | | rosstaylor0 -
Does using parentheses affect the crawlers?
Quick question: if you using a parantheses around a keyword, do search bots still recognize the keyword? Fox ex: Welcome to a website about the National Basketball Association (NBA). Will the bots recognize that I'm trying to optimize to NBA and not (NBA)? Is this different for tags vs. actual body copy?
Technical SEO | | BPIAnalytics2