My case study will show you how to increase website speed with my content delivery network MAX CDN review.

1. mat t hewwoodward.co.uk http://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/content-delivery-network-case-study/
Matthew Woodward
Content Delivery Network Case Study – Boost Site Speed &
Profits With MaxCDN
One of the biggest things I f ind a lot of people overlook is their website speed.
We are so f ocused on creating content, building links & managing social media we of ten f orget about the end
user experience.
Making sure your website loads quickly should be one of your top priorities no matter how much traf f ic your
site gets.
Slow sites are ranked lower in Google, have higher bounce rates and much lower conversion rates making it
that much harder to succeed.
One of the easiest ways to improve site speed is with a content delivery network.
What You Will Learn
Why website speed is important
What a content delivery network is
How I use a CDN to increase rankings & conversion
My personal case study results
How to improve your websites speed in less than 10 minutes
Why Is Website Speed Important?
The longer your website takes to load, the more money you are leaving on the table every single day f rom a
number of angles.
One of the biggest impacts website speed has is on conversion. Just a 1 second delay in load time can
decrease conversions by 7%!

2. In my previous site speed case study I calculated that reducing my sites load time f rom 5 seconds to 2 seconds
would result in an extra $29,076 per year profit!
This is f or a number of reasons, people like browsing f ast sites. We are busy people and every second counts
– you are much more likely to spend 10 minutes on a f ast site than a slow site.
That means people click more af f iliate links, sign up more to your list, tell more people about your site and
even stretches to the earning of social signals and backlinks.
On top of that Google have used site speed as part of the ranking algorithm since 2010. As a company they
are advocates f or speed, they are obsessed with it!
If you have read ‘In The Plex’ you will understand why Google are so obsessed with speed.
However you look at it your websites speed impacts you directly on a number of f ronts.
The good news is, it is very easy to improve!
What Is A Content Delivery Network?
A content delivery network is one of the easiest and quickest ways to speed up your sites load time.
If your website is hosted in America and someone f rom the UK visits it, the data has to travel thousands of
miles bef ore the website can load.
But if that data was mirrored in the UK, then it wouldn’t have to travel anyway near as f ar and the site would
load much f aster.
This is in essence how a content delivery network works. They mirror copies of your websites f iles and images
on servers all around the world.
So if someone f rom Australia accesses the site, it gets served f rom an Australian server. If someone f rom
India accesses the site, it gets served f rom an Indian server.
If you hit this link you will get a message f rom your local CDN data centre that stores data f rom my f ree SEO
tool website.

3. The beauty of a content delivery network though is that
once you have spent 10 minutes setting it up, you can
f orget about it.
Everything else is automatically taken care of !
Who Are MaxCDN?
MaxCDN are one of the largest content delivery network
providers in the business.
They can mirror your content in over 90 countries and are the CDN provider I use on this blog and all of my
other projects.
MaxCDN are also the provider of choice f or a huge range of websites and services like StumbleUpon, Forbes
and many major blogs.
They also make it very easy to integrate with WordPress, Magento, Joomla, Drupal, Vbulletin & a bunch of
other platf orms.
But really the only way to truly tell what they are made of – is it to put them to the test.
MaxCDN Review & Case Study
To see if MaxCDN is actually worth bothering with I setup a case study with a series of tests.
I took 4 URL’s f rom 2 websites I own on 2 dif f erent hosts and measured their site speed without MaxCDN and
then with MaxCDN enabled.
These are the pages I tested & why-
Top 100 – This page is huge, over 7MB in size and very resource intensive to load.
Raven – This page is much smaller but is made up of more text than images.
Premium Tutorials – This page very image intensive & key to conversion.
Af f iliates – A very image intensive page, af f iliates won’t promote if its slow.
This blog is hosted on the premium host WPEngine which allows you to enable the CDN with the tick of a box.
WPEngine uses MaxCDN as their CDN provider.
RankCracker is hosted on a VPS with GeekStorage and MaxCDN support was enabled through the W3 Total
Cache plugin.
The Testing Process
These are the steps I took to conduct the tests f or each URL-
1. Run the page through WebPageTest
2. Run the page through Pingdom Tools
3. Record the results
4. Enable MaxCDN
5. Run the page through WebPageTest

4. 6. Run the page through Pingdom Tools
7. Record the results
This means we are testing 4 URLs, f rom 2 domains, using 2 dif f erent web hosts with 2 dif f erent website speed
tests.
Content Delivery Network Case Study Results
I have compiled all of the results into an easy to read table!
WebPageTest Pingdom Tools
Page No CDN With CDN Time Saved No CDN With CDN Time Saved
Top 100 26.31s 24.59s -1.72s 6.77s 5.39s -1.38s
Raven 15.42s 11.57s -3.85s 3.39s 2.24s -1.15s
Premium 8.20s 6.13s -2.07s 3.51s 1.38s -2.13s
Affiliate 10.65s 7.18s -3.47s 3.84s 1.67s -2.17s
If numbers aren’t your thing let me make it a bit easier f or you to digest.
WebPageTest Pingdom Tools
Page Seconds Quicker % Quicker Seconds Quicker % Quicker
Top 100 1.72s 6.5% 5.39s 20.3%
Raven 3.85s 24.9% 2.24s 33.9%
Premium 2.07s 25.2% 1.38s 60.0%
Affiliate 3.47s 32.5% 1.67s 56.5%
You can verif y the results here.
Although both services report dif f erent load times MaxCDN provided an average website speed increase of
2.77 seconds with WebPageTest & 2.67 seconds with Pingdom.
Not bad f or 10 minutes work which instantly increases conversion rates & bottom line prof its.
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How To Setup A Content Delivery Network
Setting up the MaxCDN content delivery network f or your website is really easy.

5. All you need to do is-
1. Create a MaxCDN account
2. Create a pull zone
3. Integrate with your site
Creating A MaxCDN Account
Just head over to MaxCDN and sign up f or an account.
Accounts get setup instantly and are ready to use within minutes of signing up!
Creating A Pull Zone
Next you need to create a pull zone. This is what is used to ‘pull’ f iles f rom your website to ‘push’ them to
servers all over the world.
Just login to your MaxCDN account and f ollow these instructions.
Website Integration
The f inal step is to integrate MaxCDN and the pull zone with your website.
This is really easy just f ollow the instructions f or your website below-
That is all there is to it!
Once it is setup your f iles will automatically be mirrored all over the world.
Wrapping It Up
Setting up a content delivery network is a f antastic way to increase website speed.
It is quick and easy to do and delivers a wide range of benef its including increased user engagement,
conversion rates & Google rankings.
Whether your site gets 20 visitors a day or 20,000 a day – setting up a content delivery network like MaxCDN
should be a top priority!