Modern JavaScript frameworks like React, Angular, and Vue offer powerful capabilities for building interactive web applications. However, search engines such as Google still face challenges when crawling and indexing JavaScript-heavy websites. While Google can process JavaScript over time, it requires multiple visits and may not always render content immediately. To ensure proper indexing, Google recommends implementing dynamic rendering, especially for sites with frequently changing content or advanced JavaScript features that crawlers may not fully support.
What Is Dynamic Rendering?
Dynamic rendering is a technique that serves different versions of a webpage depending on the user agent. When a regular visitor accesses the site, they receive the standard client-side rendered content. However, when a search engine crawler visits, the request is routed to a dynamic renderer, which delivers a pre-rendered HTML version of the page. This approach ensures that search engines can efficiently access and index content without relying on complex JavaScript execution.
This method is particularly beneficial for websites that update content frequently, use JavaScript features not fully supported by crawlers, or rely on client-side rendering that delays content visibility. While not all websites require dynamic rendering, it is a recommended solution for improving SEO performance in JavaScript-driven environments.
How Dynamic Rendering Works
When a request comes in, the system detects whether it originates from a search engine crawler or a regular user. If the request is from a crawler, the server routes it to a rendering service that processes the JavaScript and generates a static HTML version. This static content is then served to the crawler, ensuring that all key elements are immediately available for indexing. In contrast, regular users experience the fully interactive, client-rendered version of the website.
Setting Up Dynamic Rendering
To implement dynamic rendering, you need to install and configure a rendering service that can transform JavaScript-based content into static HTML. Popular solutions include Puppeteer and Prerender.io, both of which generate pre-rendered versions of your pages for search engine crawlers. During configuration, it is important to specify which user agents should receive the static HTML version. Typically, this includes search engine bots like Googlebot, Bingbot, and others that may struggle with JavaScript processing.
By setting up dynamic rendering correctly, websites can improve their visibility in search results, ensuring that important content is indexed quickly and accurately. For businesses relying on JavaScript frameworks, this approach bridges the gap between modern web development and effective SEO strategies.
For JavaScript apps such as React, Angular or View, search engines such as Google still struggle to properly crawl and index all pages. Although they say they can achieve this over time after many visits, they do recommend for most sites to use dynamic rendering. Currently, it’s difficult to process JavaScript and not all search engine crawlers are able to process it successfully or immediately.
Dynamic rendering is a workaround for crawlers. It means switching between client-side rendered and pre-rendered content depending on the user agents. Dynamic rendering is good in particular for websites for which content changes rapidly, or content that uses JavaScript features that aren’t supported by crawlers. Not all sites need to use dynamic rendering.
Requests from crawlers are routed to a renderer, requests from users are served normally. Where needed, the dynamic renderer serves a version of the content that’s suitable to the crawler, for example, it may serve a static HTML version.
Dynamic Rendering Setup
To setup dynamic rendering for your content, install and configure a dynamic renderer to transform the content into static HTML. Some common dynamic renderers are Puppeteer or prerender.io. Choose the user agents that you think should receive your static HTML.
Alex is an experienced SEO consultant with over 14 years of working with global brands like Montblanc, Ricoh, Rogue, Gropius Bau and Spartoo. With a focus on data-driven strategies, Alex helps businesses grow their online presence and optimise SEO efforts.
After working in-house as Head of SEO at Spreadshirt, he now works independently, supporting clients globally with a focus on digital transformation through SEO.
He holds an MBA and has completed a Data Science certification, bringing strong analytical skills to SEO. With experience in web development and Scrum methodologies, they excel at collaborating with cross-functional teams to implement scalable digital strategies.
Outside work, he loves sport: running, tennis and swimming in particular!
