Is Using a CDN Helpful or Harmful for Your Dealership Website?

Using a CDN for images on websites has been an ever increasing progression within the past 3 to 5 years.  The primary reasons … speed and shopper experience.  In our experience through testing sites that use a CDN and those that don’t is that those utilizing a CDN have faster sites and lower bounce rates.  Why is that?

A CDN (content delivery network) is really a beefed up server network delivery system designed for speed which allows whatever content (ie. images, videos, etc..) that are stored on the CDN to load your web pages VERY fast compared to having that same content stored in the same location as your web pages themselves.

So, we’ve established that performance is a plus when using a CDN, but what about search engine ranking considerations.  Because an image is not hosted on the same server or under the perception of the same domain name does it hurt the rankings of a website?  Simple answer is No.  In fact many of the top ranking websites use a CDN.

Let’s take RVTrader.com for example.  They rank very well for a large cross-section of search key terms.  Yet, their site is rvtrader.com and their images are hosted on a CDN under the images.rvtraderonline.com domain.  There are many other examples, but at the end of the day search engines desire quality, relevant content, that is delivered speedily to website guests.

At InteractRV, we’ve been utilizing CDN’s for a number of years to help our clients achieve the best results.  As always, we expect the landscape to continue evolving on what works best and are always looking for the best way to improve.

If your technical mind still has you in knots, you can read more about the benefits of using a CDN here or do a simple search online for benefits of a content delivery network.