Dynamic rendering: what it is, how it works, limitations and alternatives
As useful as it is problematic: JavaScript is at the heart of web development today and is often considered an indispensable technology for building modern, dynamic and feature-rich sites. However, what simplifies and enriches the user experience can prove tricky for search engines: frameworks such as Angular, React or Vue.js generate client-side content that Googlebot and other crawlers struggle to crawl and index properly. To overcome this obstacle, dynamic rendering has been an essential intermediate solution for years, capable of translating complex content into search-engine readable versions. As web technologies have evolved, however, dynamic rendering has also revealed its limitations, so much so that Google itself discourages its practice, suggesting alternatives such as server-side rendering, static rendering andhydration. In this guide, we will look at why dynamic rendering has been a milestone for technical SEO, what challenges it poses today, and what are the most sustainable solutions to ensure proper indexing and excellence performance.
What is dynamic rendering
Dynamic rendering is a technique used to serve a different version of a web page depending on the type of visitor: while normal users are shown a page generated via client-side JavaScript, search engine bots are provided with a static HTML version , which is easier to scan and index. This distinction is what gives this rendering technique the term “dynamic,” since the content of the page changes dynamically based on the identity of the requesting user agent.
