Google Cloud CDN for WordPress: Features and how to set it up at Templ

Google Cloud CDN is one of the fastest CDNs in the world. It is the same CDN powering YouTube, Gmail, Google search, and other products from Google.

Using Google Cloud CDN for your WordPress site will speed up your site and make it easily accessible to your customers and readers around the world.

The benefit of a fast website is overwhelming. According to Google, speed is a ranking factor. That means if you have a slow website, your site will perform badly in Google’s search result.

Do you know that a slow website can impact your sales? A slow website will affect how much money you make negatively. According to a research by Skilled, page load time directly affects conversion rates. The research finds that 79% of customers who are dissatisfied with a website performance are less likely to buy. Every 1-second delay means a 7% reduction in conversion.

If your website is slow, then your business is at risk. It should be a priority to fix it. A fast website will increase conversion rate and improve your SEO.

A good web hosting can boost your speed. But sometimes, it is not enough. Especially if you have readers or customers around the World.

That is where a Content Delivery Network (CDN) comes in. A CDN creates many copies of your site (or parts thereof) and stores them in different locations around the world. Then serve them to your users when they try to visit your site from the closest location.

Features and advantages of Google Cloud CDN

Google Cloud CDN is at the very top of the best CDNs for WordPress. Here are some features and advantages that make Google Cloud CDN the best choice.

1. Over 130 locations

With over 130 locations, Google Cloud CDN has one of the best networks to speed up content delivery.

This will benefit you specifically if you have customers or readers around the world.

When you set up your website at your web host you sometimes have the opportunity to choose where your server should be located. When your visitors visit your website, the website loads from that location. If your data center is in Detroit and your visitor is from Britain, your website still needs to load from Detroit.

This can slow down your page load time. And based on the research we have seen above, you could potentially lose customers.

But when you use Google Cloud CDN, your site will be made available from over 130 locations worldwide. So if your site is hosted in Detroit and a user visits from Britain, your site will load from Britain to the user. This reduces the time it takes to fetch the site from Detroit. Making your site fast no matter the location of your customers or readers.

2. Speed

Google Cloud CDN is known for its speed. To see how fast Google Cloud CDN is, I will use CDNperf. CDNperf is a platform that collects real-world data on the performance of CDNs.

It is very easy to use. If you go to CDNPerf, you will immediately see the performance of all major CDNs for the past 30 days. You can check performance worldwide or by continents.

From the above result, Google Cloud CDN comes up with the best among the big names.
Google Cloud CDN averaged a query speed of 66.40ms. That is more than Microsoft Azure CDN whose average is 71.00ms, Amazon’s AWS CloudFront CDN at 71.80ms, and Cloudflare CDN at 77.17ms.

If you check by continents, you will notice Google Cloud CDN is consistently at the top.

3. HTTP/2 and QUIC

Google Cloud CDN supports the latest technologies. HTTP/2 and QUIC are supported. These are the new generation technologies powering the web. QUIC (Quick UDP Internet Connection) makes HTTP traffic fast and secure.

But it goes beyond just supporting these technologies. They were actually developed at Google! The advantage is that they can speed up websites. Most especially for mobile visitors.

4. Anycast

As the leader in technology, Anycast is one of the numerous features of Google Cloud CDN. This is at the core of its content delivery.

5. HTTPS

HTTPS is packaged with Google Cloud CDN for free. SSL is very important for businesses. It is standard.
Users are free to bring in their own SSL.

6. Integrated with Google Cloud

Google Cloud CDN is integrated with Google Cloud Platform (GCP), which is known for its low latency. Meaning it can process a high volume of data with very minimal delay. That means your site will not go offline just because of a very big spike in traffic.

As a result of the integration, the CDN benefits from Cloud Monitoring and logging.

7. In Good company

Using Google Cloud CDN and GCP means you are in good company. The Google Cloud network is used by top brands, including:

• YouTube
• Gmail
• Google Search
• Twitter
• Snapchat
• PayPal
• Spotify
• New York Times
• HSBC
• Target
• Bloomberg
• Sky
• Home Depot
• And more

How to set up Google Cloud CDN at Templ

There is no skill required to integrate Google Cloud CDN with WordPress at Templ because Templ has already built a solid platform that integrates Google Cloud CDN with every site hosted. All you have to do to activate Google Cloud CDN at Templ is to contact our support and we will do it for you.

Conclusion

You should be using a CDN to make your site load faster for your users around the world. This will lead to better user experience, reduced bounce rate, improved SEO, and better conversion rate.

A CDN will also reduce the load on your origin server. As a result, your site can handle more visitors. This means that if you suddenly have a spike in traffic, the CDN will reduce the possibility of your site crashing.