The majority of times when new clients come to us to help them with SEO issues, they are usually plagued by similar issues. Many of these times, we end up recommending Cloudflare and taking care of the implementation and configuration for their particular case. Today, I will discuss how Cloudflare can help you rank higher on search engines and why it may be a great solution for your website’s SEO issues.
What Is Cloudflare?
At its core, Cloudflare is a DNS management system. A DNS basically takes a URL (for example your website.com) and translates it into an IP address so that your browser can load resources and show you the site you are going to. Sure, Cloudflare is a DNS manager, but it is so much more.
What Else Does Cloudflare Do & How Can It Help Me With Search Engine Rankings?
The following is a list of Cloudflare features and how they can help your website’s performance which can then help you rank better on search engines like Google.
Cloudflare Makes Your Site Secure
Search engines want to serve the best answers. However, you can have the best answers, but if your site is not secure, search engines will be hesitant to serve your site as a result. These are just a few of the security features Cloudflare has to offer:
- SSL (Secure Sockets Layer): The technology keeps internet connections secure and safeguards data transferred between two systems.
- TLS (Transport Layer Security): This encrypts data being transferred so that hackers can’t see what you are transmitting (for example passwords & credit card numbers)
- WAF (Web Application Firewall): A WAF works so that each time someone tries to hit your site, they are “screened” and if they are on a “blocklist, they are not allowed to go on your site.
- DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service)/Bot Management: Basically, whoever is orchestrating the DDOS has a bunch of bots to hit your site all at the same time. This slows down your site, increases your bounce rate, and tells search engines that you site is either broken or not secure.
Cloudflare Helps Your Site Perform Better
Cloudflare also offers some great options to help your site perform better, making it more likely that search engines will send you traffic. Let’s go through each one:
- CDN (Content Delivery Network): Imagine your hotel website is hosted in Europe. However, there are people from all over the world looking to reach your website. This takes longer simply because of distances. Cloudflare’s CDN allows for copies of your website to be stored in multiple locations so that someone who is trying to reach your site can access the copy in a pop near them making the site load faster.
- Caching: Every time someone tries to load your website, their browser needs to process the information, load images, ads, and videos. A cache is a stored version of your site, so that when someone hits your site, there is already a snapshot, a saved version of your website, so that user does not have to wait to see and interact with your site. This significantly improves site speed which has great SEO benefits.
- Java Script Code Minify: In this case, Cloudflare removes unnecessary characters from your JavaScript source code while keeping its functionality intact, making the file size more compact which again, improves your website’s performance.
- Image Optimization: Images are a very common culprit when it comes to website performance issues. Not only can large image sizes and file formats make your site slower to load, but systems oftentimes create various formats of the same image taking up space in your server. By optimising images, you can shave precious seconds off your site’s load time.
- Redirects: Incorrect redirects can cause so much damage to a website. Cloudflare has a robust redirect system that works incredibly well with a large number of redirects.