The Lowdown on CDNs: Everything You Should Know to Optimize Your Website | ODEA

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The Lowdown on CDNs: Everything You Should Know to Optimize Your Website

Hey you! Welcome to our latest blog series, Brain Snacks! In between our longer-form content, we will be incorporating shorter blogs in the mix to give your brain a quick-read to munch on. To kick off our new series, we’re giving you the run-down on all things Content Delivery Networks (CDNs): what they are, how to use them, and why you should know this info! 

Waaaay back at the beginning of 2021 (which simultaneously feels like yesterday and a lifetime ago), the ODEA-ites watched a video by Neil Patel on How Digital Marketing Will Change in 2021. We decided to revisit this video to see if it still rings true halfway through the year. 

According to Patel, it is essential to ensure that your site loads super-fast in 2021. In the video, he recommends using CDNs to load non-static files. To learn more on the importance of fast-loading sites, check out our blog, Why You Should Be Optimizing Images for Web.

Back to the Basics

But first, a quick refresh. Essentially, a CDN is a group of geographically distributed network servers linked together to provide you with faster content delivery. 

When it comes to loading internet content like images, videos, or HTML pages, a CDN’s job is to ensure that these assets load quickly. Major content sites like Amazon and Netflix use CDNs to load movies, products, and other content. CDNs also improve web performance through caching, which reduces hosting bandwidth and prevents issues with service and security.

CDNs with Benefits

With quick loading times and prevention of security blunders, CDNs are sounding like a dream! Let’s dive deeper and discuss even more benefits of content delivery networks. 

Give your Site Traffic a Booster Shot

Consumers love fast websites- they’re busy and don’t have time to wait around all day for your site to load! As such, with quicker loading times comes more traffic. Without any issues present, consumers go about their browsing as normal. And as we touched on above, CDNs helps your content load fast and efficiently. But that’s not all!

Bandwidth Savior

Content delivery networks cache content, which means that origin servers don’t have to deliver the same content over and over for each visitor to a website. In doing this, sites are optimizing their bandwidth, resulting in lower costs overall. 

Did that tasty brain snack satisfy your knowledge cravings? Great! Keep an eye on our social media for updates because we have more Brain Snacks coming to keep your noggin happy.