What is Server-Side Rendering (SSR)?
Server-side rendering is a popular technique for rendering a normally client-side single-page app (SPA) on the server and sending a fully rendered page to the client.
The client’s JavaScript bundle can then take over and the SPA can operate as normal.
SSR sends a fully populated HTML file to the client, eliminating the need for the client to render the HTML.
This increases the perceived performance of your web application and can significantly improve search engine indexing.
Why Use SSR in NextJS for SEO?
NextJS was designed with a focus on production and efficiency, and the framework does an exceptional job of SSR.
When it comes to web crawlers, they primarily see the initially rendered HTML of the website and aren't likely to wait for your JavaScript to load and display the rest of the content.
With SSR, the initial HTML has all of the content, improving your SEO.
SSR also greatly improves your web app's performance.
Since full HTML is sent from the server, it paints a full page in the first response.
This results in fast First Contentful Paint (FCP) and improves your page load time.
Implementing SSR in NextJS
In NextJS, every file within the pages folder will automatically become a route.
The content of the page will be rendered based on the exported function or class within the file.
For example, we can create a Home page:
export default function Home() {
return <p>Hello, world!</p>
}
NextJS uses SSR by default in every page we create like this. It's that simple.
Fine-Tuning SEO with SSR
While SSR by itself drastically improves SEO, there are still a few things that can further optimize your NextJS apps for better SEO performance.
Resolve Dependencies at Server: If a page relies on external data, make sure you fetch it at the server-side itself so crawlers can have full, meaningful content during the initial render.
Use Structured Data: Using structured {data} along with SSR provides search crawlers with a detailed context of your page's content.
Implement Metadata: Use next/head to set essential meta tags for every page, like title, description, Open Graph, and Twitter cards.
By now, you must have a fair understanding of why SSR is crucial for SEO and how to implement it in your NextJS applications.
While starting from scratch might be tricky, using a boilerplate like [PullTheCode](https://pullthecode.com/) can help you rapidly build and deploy web applications, including all the SEO goodness from SSR and much more.
PullTheCode offers also base features like blog integration, stripe payments, SSO with NextAuth, Google Analytics support, and weekly updates.
So whether you're a developer looking to launch your MVPs quickly and efficiently, or a startup aiming for a quick market entry, PullTheCode could be the go-to solution for you.
Happy coding!