Having a WordPress blog is a great way to get started with blogging. It is user friendly, looks great and with the right tweaking can gain a massive amount of traffic quickly.
Now something that many people want is a fast running WordPress blog. Something that is not slow and sluggish, which is something no one who is visiting a website wants to deal with. Slow loading websites basically mean people will leave before they actually get to see what you have to offer.
Something that can help with the speed of your WordPress website or blog is having a CDN, a content delivery network.
WHAT IS A CDN?
A content delivery network, is layman’s terms, is a number of servers spread throughout the world. They deliver cached static content from websites to users based on their geographic location.
So what makes that so special?
The reason having a CDN is so beneficial is this:
When you have a website, you also have a hosting company. This means that when someone visits your WordPress blog they are redirected to your hosts server. That is all well and good if your blog is starting out and has very little traffic, but as it starts to grow in popularity and traffic to the website increases, the load on the hosting provider’s server can become overloaded and this results in a slow loading website or even worse – a crashed site!
Something else to note – there is no commitment when it comes to investing in a CDN. You can take it on a “pay as you go” kind of package and make use of it as and when you need it.
HOW CAN A CDN HELP ME?
When you invest in a CDN it means that the redirection starts spreading out throughout the world to all the various network servers. This alleviates the load and your website speed becomes increased and your website visitors are happy and want to stay on your site and navigate through everything you have provided for them.
It is important to know that the closer the CDN is to a particular user, the faster the site will load for that user in their specific area.
So if we were to summarise why you should have a CDN for your WordPress blog, this would be it:
Speed – because as we mentioned before, no one wants to sit around waiting for a website to load, especially in this day and age. We generally want instant gratification. As you would have read above, having a CDN spreads the load when traffic increases to your website, and this in turn means loading speed increases.
Crash No More – Having a CDN increases speed, great, but what is important to know is that it can also prevent your website from crashing. The reason a website crashes, more often than not, is because of a massive growth in traffic visiting your site, and the server cannot handle it. The only way to respond is for the website to shut down completely. With a CDN, you spread the traffic load and ease the pressure on the site – and this results in no more crashing.
Happier Visitors – Many people who have started using CDN’s have reported that they have experienced less bounce rates from their sites, more page views and a large increase in click through. This means that people are happier to be on the website and want to stick around longer and check things out before navigating away – which is the ultimate goal of anyone with a blog or website.
Improved SEO – As mentioned by Google itself, websites that load faster tend to show up better and in a higher percentage in search engines. This has also being reported as truth by many who have started using a CDN to increase load speed.
THAT’S A WRAP…
Having a content delivery network is fast becoming the way to go if you want to increase traffic and keep people interested and coming back for more. This is surely your main goal if you have a WordPress blog as you would want to, at the end of the day, start to generate some kind of income from what you have to offer.
The investment into a CDN will be completely worth it at the end of the day. If you are interested in a CDN and it sounds like something you may need but you are not too sure where to start, get in touch with one of our specialists at Creative Ground and we can help point you in the right direction.
