Stuff about CDN's.......

Some general information about CDN's.

As we continue down this road on site speed and how fast your website loads we will explain in very simple and general terms how a CDN works.

Using a CDN will provide faster site loading time and some added site security. CDN (content delivery network) is technically a network of servers located in strategic areas around a region or the globe. All websites are loaded from the server where the site files are located.

Let's say, for example, you are searching for a company that sells wholesale flooring products. For our purposes we'll say this company is located in China. They have a website that is hosted by a company located in China (this hosting company is where the website files are sitting). You, being in Atlanta Georgia, are trying to find this company's website. Without a CDN, your computer will go over the Internet and pull these website files from the hosting company in China. So what you see on your computer is a website that was pulled from China.

Now, that's a long way for that website to travel to get to your computer. That takes time. Sometimes too much time. Most people will not wait for that website to load if it takes too long and will try a different company.

A CDN is a host server that will store most (not all) of that website's content (including images and text) in a location closer to you. Let's say that the CDN is located in New York. So now, most of that website that you are trying to load is located in New York and not China. This website will now take much less time to load since it's coming from New York. The idea is for search results in Google to load fast and for all of the websites served up to load fast thereby increasing the user's experience.

CDN's aren't for everybody. If you own a small plumbing company in Fenton Michigan, then you really don't care if your website loads fast for someone searching for a plumber in Beijing! However, Google still uses site speed as a ranking factor so even though your website may not need a CDN to serve your potential clients, you may want to use a CDN anyways.

CDN's cost money so any choice to use one must be leveraged against the increase in traffic that may or may not occur. Spending money on a CDN to increase your site speed ranking that doesn't lead directly to an increase in website traffic and hence more business for you should be carefully considered. High traffic sites should probably use a CDN whereas a smaller, locally owned company who is just trying to service his small local area probably doesn't need to spend the money. Of course every case is different and should be considered on an individual basis.

Now you probably know more than you ever cared to know about CDN's, eh?

Nuff said......





 Jeffrey Dean
LMS Website Services
http://www.lmswebsiteservices.com

Site Speed Continued.....

Continuing in the same vane as last week, we will look at site speed issues again this week.

I just came across a blog that did a review on free (not really free) or cheap (not really cheap) website creation companies that offer a "build it yourself and save money" type of business model. They will push the fact that you don't have to have any knowledge of coding. You can build a website with the drag and drop method.....

Lots of things wrong with this.

1. You are restricted to what they offer when it pertains to customization. You can't customize your website any way you want because they only offer certain looks and layouts. This can be a huge problem or no problem at all depending on what you want to accomplish with your website.

2. Lots of extra code is included in every website you build because all of the tools you use to make your website are coded into the website behind the scenes. This creates a low quality website with lots of clutter in the code. This can affect your Google rankings, site speed and other loading factors.

3. What about keyword search. They will offer some SEO tools but how do you know how to write your on page content. Probably one of the most important factors in Google rankings is your on page content. Which keywords are most searched for in your industry and how do you include them in your content? How will Google perceive your keywords? What about keyword density? Have you ever heard about that? Which keywords do you want to rank for? These low cost, DIY website creation companies won't help you with any of this will they?

4. What about Gzip compression, image sprites, optimizing your images for site load speed, smushing your images, parsing your javascript, minifying your CSS, HTML and Javascript, leveraging your browser caching etc, etc, etc? What are these low cost website design companies doing for you in these areas? These are all important issues in site speed performance.

A great site to use to check your site speed is GTMetrix. They will measure your site performance using Google's Page Speed Insights and Yahoo's YSlow.

This is all important stuff when it comes to Google ranking your site and how relevant your site becomes to certain searches. Anybody can build a website but can anybody build a website that will have built in value? Just because you have a website doesn't mean you will be "found on the Internet". Building a website the right way takes knowledge. Knowledge of what Google wants. Knowledge of how to get your site shown on the first page of Google. Otherwise, really, what is your site worth if it can't be found because it was built cheaply without any of these considerations in mind?

Next week CDN's.......(what the heck are CDN's? Tune in next week and find out....)

Jeffrey Dean
LMS Website Services
http://www.lmswebsiteservices.com

The Growing Importance of Site Speed....

Site speed. Or loading speed. In other words, how fast your website loads.

How fast does your website load?

Google is putting more emphasis on how fast a website loads. They feel that a faster loading web site enhances the user experience. And Google is all about the end user experience. Google has come to realize that people don't/ won't wait for a slow loading website to appear. If a site takes too long to load, most people will just exit out and go to another site in the search results.

You don't want this to be your site. A website that loads too slowly and hence provides a low quality user experience. If your site is slow, Google will lower your rankings. Lowering your rankings will cost you in the search results. Of course site speed is not the only factor in site ranking but it is becoming increasingly important to Google and plays a big part in where you will be found in search results.

Knowing this, we must do the things required to speed up your website. This is an integral part of
current SEO strategies. Also, increasing your site speed will be an ongoing task. You won't just optimize your site once and figure all is good now. We need to constantly monitor our sites to make sure they are still loading at a fast pace.

Some things that can be done to speed up your site are:

1. optimize your images for file size
2. minify your javascript, css and html code
3. leverage browser caching
4. avoid landing page redirects
5. enable compression
6. reduce the size of above the fold content
7. use CSS sprites
8. and lots more really....

There are a couple of online tools that can be used to look at your site speed. Google developers will use page speed insights. There is also Yahoo's YSlow and GTMetrix which will test both for you.

Page speed is getting more and more important all the time so it is worth it to spend some money on having your site speed looked at and optimized. Your Google rankings will thank you!

Jeffrey Dean
LMS Website Services
http://www.lmswebsiteservices.com