In SEO, you're not just improving your pages for users. 

You also need to optimize your pages for search engine crawlers, AKA bots in charge of discovering and indexing pages into search databases. 

Outside of fast loading speeds, users and bots don't always look for the same things. 

Users want interactivity, valuable information, and unique visual elements that capture their attention. Bots, on the other hand, are mostly processing textual content, metadata, links, and keyword relevance. 

This dichotomy makes on-page optimization extra tricky, especially if you’re using a JavaScript framework to enrich the user experience. Search engines have gotten a lot better at understanding JavaScript over the years, but in some cases, it can still present difficulties for crawlers when it comes to digesting the contents of a website. 

But what if you can have two different versions of the same page — one for humans and one for bots? 

This brings us to today's topic: dynamic rendering. 

What is Dynamic Rendering?

Dynamic rendering creates a separate, less JavaScript intensive version of a web page that's exclusively served to search engine crawlers. This is a static HTML version that's fully rendered from the server, enabling faster crawl times while maximizing your crawl budget. 

While all of this is happening, users still get the full, client-side version of the page with all the bells and whistles. All your carousels, content feeds, animations, and fancy menu effects will remain intact for humans — while avoiding serving unnecessary content that could slow down processing for search engine bots . 

In other words, dynamic rendering ensures that your crawler optimization efforts have zero impact on the real user experience. 

This begs the question…

How Does Dynamic Rendering Work?

Basic dynamic rendering works in three simple steps: 

• Preparing your server — A dynamic renderer or solution like Nostra AI's Crawler Optimization service is installed on your server to generate static HTML copies of your pages, which are rendered on the server side and cached. The renderer is also tasked with telling apart bots and real users. 
• Rerouting requests — HTTP requests from bots are automatically redirected to the static, fully-rendered page. The entire content is ready for crawling and indexing as soon as it's served to bots. 
• User detection — If a request is coming from a real user, the rerouting step is skipped. The original page may use client-side rendering and caching as normal. 

To better understand this process, you need to learn the difference between client-side and server-side rendering.

Client-side pages are rendered within a browser tab, executing scripts and downloading external resources in real time. This ensures users get the freshest version of the page, while static elements are cached locally for faster loading in future visits. 

On the other hand, a server-side page is fully loaded and compiled into a static HTML file directly from the server. Dynamic rendering uses server-side rendering and caching to help search engines crawl your pages faster. 

How does this help SEO? 

Crawling, Rendering, Indexing and Ranking

To understand how dynamic rendering impacts SEO, first, you need a firm grasp of the crawling process. 

Search engine crawlers or "spiders" start with a list of predefined URLs or "seed URLs." These are retrieved from previous crawls of other pages, external and internal links, and user-submitted sitemaps. 

The crawler sends an HTTP request to fetch content from each URL, pulling in text content, metadata, and other links for further crawling. After an initial crawl of each URL, bots then go through a process known as rendering, where the search engine attempts to process the content of the webpage into a digestible format (the rendering phase is when you will typically see issues caused by JavaScript frameworks). Once rendering is complete, search engines then add these pages to the search index — ranking them based on a variety of factors like content quality, user engagement, page performance, and keyword optimization. 

Indexed pages are then shown to search engine users based on their rankings. The higher your rankings, the more potential traffic you can bring to your site. 

Pretty simple, right? 

What a lot of website owners don't know, however, is that bots have a limited crawl budget. 

As big as search engines like Google are, they don't have infinite resources. As such, they can't keep on crawling your entire site until all pages are discovered. 

JavaScript-reliant pages like online stores exacerbate this problem by wasting a bot's crawl budget by trying to "read" and render resource intensive scripts. The same can be said for: 

• Large websites with hundreds or thousands of pages
• Websites that rely on a lot of third-party integrations 
• Websites with a lot of frequently-changing content (that requires faster indexing and higher crawl limits)
• Single-page web apps

Dynamic Rendering and SEO

Long story short, dynamic rendering helps search engines crawl your pages faster and index more of your website. 

According to statistics, Google fails to crawl 51% of large websites due to existing crawl limits. That's a little over half of your website virtually invisible to search engine users. 

While dynamic rendering offers a quick and effective workaround to this issue, it's important to acknowledge that it's not the end all be all of crawler optimization. 

You can also handle JavaScript better and maximize your crawl budget through the following practices: 

• Removing unused JavaScript — Your leftover scripts from uninstalled or deprecated plugins can impact your page's performance not just for crawlers, but for real users as well. Consider removing them entirely to lighten and speed up your website. 
• Addressing other crawler-related issues — Use Google Search Console to uncover crawling issues with your website. You can also use this tool to monitor changes in your website's crawl budget over time. 
• Blocking crawlers from non-essential pages — To preserve your crawl limits, try using the "noindex" tag on pages that don't need to be crawled or indexed. This includes "Thank You" pages, user profiles, login forms, and pages under construction. 

How to Implement Dynamic Rendering

Dynamic rendering looks straightforward on paper, and it is with an experienced dev team by your side. 

However, dynamic rendering can be a time-consuming process if you choose to do it yourself. Not to mention it’s sometimes considered a temporary workaround to crawling issues brought about by JavaScript (unless it is used as part of a broader performance optimization initiative). For single page applications using frameworks like React, hydration can be another viable solution. 

The first thing you need to do is to develop an implementation plan that identifies the pages you need to dynamically render. These are pages that may contain a lot of essential JavaScript, like your homepage, browser-based apps, and complex product landing pages.  

You then need to decide on your dynamic rendering tool to generate your static pages. Your options include a paid tool like Prerender or an open-source solution like Rendertron.

Tip: Don't forget that you also need to cache your static HTML pages to avoid timeouts, which will actually do more harm than good to your site's crawlability. 

The next step is to deploy a middleware on your server to identify if incoming traffic is a bot or a real user. This middleware will also be in charge of rerouting crawlers to the static, bot-friendly version of your page. 

Take note that you may need considerable coding work to do this, depending on how you set up your server. 

For example, if you used Rendertron in the previous step and deployed its instance via Google Cloud, you need to use the following code: 

Finally, you need to verify if your pre-rendered page is being indexed correctly. 

Use Google Search Console — particularly the URL Inspection tool — to check your cached page's indexation status. 

How Nostra Can Help

Dynamic rendering is a simple yet effective workaround to the JavaScript problem in crawler optimization. 

It definitely doesn't involve heavy coding, but it's easy to mess up your dynamic rendering implementation if you don't have any technical background. 

The good news is, you don't have to do it yourself. 

Nostra AI's Crawler Optimization service helps dynamically render your pages to supercharge crawlability without impacting the experience of real users — with a straightforward implementation process and minimal technical infrastructure required.

The best part of it is, the Crawler Optimization service comes for free with a subscription to our Edge Delivery Engine. This will allow your website to achieve near-instantaneous loading speeds for the majority of users around the globe. 

Watch your performance metrics skyrocket with dynamic rendering and edge delivery. Click here to book a demo today.