CloudFlare and other Content Distribution Networks (aka CDNs) place an exact replica of your blog’s static content onto multiple servers that are located literally around the globe.
When a visitor’s web browser requests one of your blog’s posts or pages, the static content on that particular post or page is delivered to the visitor’s web browser from the CDN server that’s located closest to the visitor’s physical location. The benefits of that are two-fold:
1 – The requested post or page loads quickly in the visitor’s browser since its static content only has to travel the shorter distance between the server and the visitor’s computer or mobile device instead of from your primary web server which could potentially be located half-way around the world.
2 – The dynamic content that must be retrieved from your blog’s primary server is delivered faster as well since the aforementioned CDN server has already delivered the page’s static content, reducing the over-all load on the primary server.
3 – The benefits mentioned above also help protect your blog from Denial of Service (DoS) attacks and help prevent it from crashing when a post goes viral on Reddit, Digg, Facebook or one of the other popular social networking sites.
4 – And finally, the faster page load times enabled by the CDN will help your blog rank higher in Google’s search results since Google now considers page load times when ranking pages in their search results.
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