
Ask HN: Azure with Cloudflare, good SEO choice? - doczoidberg
I want to use Cloudflare for SSL and optimizations on my ASP.NET Core&#x2F;Angular2 website. Is this a good choice? Of course I want good performance and good search engine rankings.
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citruspi
SSL (whether via Cloudflare or not) will help since Google uses HTTPS as a
ranking signal[0].

A CDN (Cloudflare or other) will help since Google also uses page speed as a
ranking signal[1]. (Other Cloudflare features like HTTP/2 will also help with
page speed).

As far as the Angular portion goes, single page apps _could_ hurt rankings,
but shouldn't with Google[2]. However, I'd still suggest looking into Angular
Universal. It'll allow you to serve a server-side rendered version of the page
when it's first loaded, which will make it easier for search engines to scrape
your application. After that initial load, the application will use client-
side Angular.

There's an Angular University blog post which provides some information on
that[3].

Obviously there's plenty of other search engines that aren't Google. For
search engines that don't use page speed or HTTPS as a ranking signal, those
won't be important (but are still important in general!). For search engines
that don't execute JavaScript or have a poor understanding of Single Page
Applications, server-side rendering will be super important.

[0]: [https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/08/https-as-
ranking-s...](https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/08/https-as-ranking-
signal.html)

[1]: [https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2010/04/using-site-
speed-i...](https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-
search-ranking.html)

[2]: [https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/05/understanding-
web-...](https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/05/understanding-web-pages-
better.html)

[3]: [http://blog.angular-university.io/angular-2-universal-
meet-t...](http://blog.angular-university.io/angular-2-universal-meet-the-
internet-of-the-future-seo-friendly-single-page-web-apps/)

~~~
doczoidberg
Thanks for your answer. I want to use Angular Universal but I also you
Firebase/AngularFire2 which doesn't work with Angular Universal yet (only a
matter of time).

I ask myself if Cloudflare is needed when I already use Azure. Can it hurt my
search engine rankings? Getting SSL for free (and quick setup in comparison to
Azure+Let's encrypt!) with Cloudflare is nice.

~~~
iurisilvio
Azure is the whole Microsoft platform. If you are using Azure CDN, you have
the same thing CloudFlare gives you. If it is just an Azure virtual machine,
it is a completely different thing.

------
seanwilson
What makes you think Cloudflare would hurt your rankings? Compared to what?

