Content Strategy & SEO

WoodAlexa
Member

What is Cloudflare and how does it affect SEO?

SOLVE

Hello, 
Do you have a moment to answer a quick question? 

What are the chances of cloudflare hurting Google rankings or SEO for a website? 

Google is helping me find the answer I'm looking for. I, however, find it confusing to read answers. I decided to consult an expert in order to find out more. Is there anything you can do for me? 

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1 Accepted solution
Jake_Lett
Solution
Guide | Partner
Guide | Partner

What is Cloudflare and how does it affect SEO?

SOLVE

If you are trying to reach a global audience with your website, it is very important and helpful. In my experience, it greatly impacts TTFB or time to the first byte. How quickly someone starts to receive your site when they enter your domain in their browser. If your website is hosted in Michigan and someone requests it in India. The data has to travel a long distance to get there. In contrast, if your website is hosted in Michigan but also cached on cloudfare, your site is duplicated on other servers all around the world. Even one in India. So the time it takes the data to travel to the source of the request is cut down dramatically. 

 

The browser cannot render a page until it has the data of the document.

 

I wrote an article about my experience manually setting up cloudlare on a WordPress site and how it improved my google page speed score. I was going crazy because my google page speed scores were good but the field data in google search console were showing as too high. It was then I went down the rabbit hole of figuring out how to optimize TTFB.

https://bootstrapcreative.com/how-to-improve-core-web-vitals-and-ttfb-for-wordpress-sites/

 

Good place to test your TTFB - https://speedvitals.com/ttfb-test

 

Hope this helps. 

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1 Reply 1
Jake_Lett
Solution
Guide | Partner
Guide | Partner

What is Cloudflare and how does it affect SEO?

SOLVE

If you are trying to reach a global audience with your website, it is very important and helpful. In my experience, it greatly impacts TTFB or time to the first byte. How quickly someone starts to receive your site when they enter your domain in their browser. If your website is hosted in Michigan and someone requests it in India. The data has to travel a long distance to get there. In contrast, if your website is hosted in Michigan but also cached on cloudfare, your site is duplicated on other servers all around the world. Even one in India. So the time it takes the data to travel to the source of the request is cut down dramatically. 

 

The browser cannot render a page until it has the data of the document.

 

I wrote an article about my experience manually setting up cloudlare on a WordPress site and how it improved my google page speed score. I was going crazy because my google page speed scores were good but the field data in google search console were showing as too high. It was then I went down the rabbit hole of figuring out how to optimize TTFB.

https://bootstrapcreative.com/how-to-improve-core-web-vitals-and-ttfb-for-wordpress-sites/

 

Good place to test your TTFB - https://speedvitals.com/ttfb-test

 

Hope this helps.