We all want faster websites, no matter which side of the site we’re sitting on.
Studies have shown that users can quickly lose interest if a website appears to take more than a second to load.
As a business owner, you don’t want to lose valuable customers just because your website is a little sluggish.
Slow site speed can also impact your SEO. While most search engines rank a website on things like content, relevancy, header information, and page titles, they also measure based on the length of time it takes a website to respond and a page to load. Not only does a slow website have the potential to turn off your customers, it might even make it harder for them to find you in the first place.
So how can you address these issues before they get out of hand?
Photo by Agence Olloweb / Unsplash
Content Delivery Network (CDN)
One way to dramatically improve website speed, customer satisfaction, and SEO is to use something called a Content Delivery Network (CDN). The idea behind a CDN is very simple: If the CDN already has most of the information it needs about your site, it can load it much faster. That means that whenever a user or search engine tries to access your website, the CDN can accelerate the loading of your site because it cuts out the middleman.
Rather than wait for every single element of your site to load for the very first time, the CDN should already have most of the important pieces stored or cached in its memory, meaning that it can almost instantly respond to the request and make your website appear much faster. Add in some image compression so that some of the most common delays are further reduced, and
a good CDN could increase your website speed by up to 50%.
Photo by Farzad Nazifi / Unsplash
Web Application Security (WAF)
But there are many ways to measure happiness, and a sure-fire way to ramp it up even more is to add relevant security. One of the problems of making your site easier to find is that you make it easier for the bad guys to find it, too. And that’s one type of visitor you really don’t want dropping by unannounced.
Which is why a good CDN should always be paired with a protective layer; A Web Application Firewall (WAF) that can make sure that none of those visitors do your site any harm.
As a business owner, you’re probably busy with myriad other things – so consider the WAF as your website’s online guard dog. A good WAF will help filter out the bad guys, identify suspicious website visitors or behavior, protect against a variety of common attacks, and even block access to certain IP addresses and even countries. At the same time, the speed provided by the CDN recognizes the good guys coming to your site and serves it in the blink of an eye.
If you want your website to load faster, start by securing it with CDN that has a WAF built right in. Not only will your site load in milliseconds, but you’ll be blocking malware and attacks with 99.9% accuracy. Learn more about Rebel’s Website Security products powered by SiteLock.
