Dynamic rendering is a technical SEO practice that allows you to create a bot-friendly version of your website — to increase the amount of content crawled, indexed, and ranked by search engines — and a human-friendly version optimized for a quality user experience.
This article will answer these questions:
- What does SEO look like in 2021?
- What is technical SEO?
- What is dynamic rendering?
- What are the SEO benefits of dynamic rendering?
- What are the business benefits of dynamic rendering?
- How can I implement it for my own site?
Search Engine Optimization in 2021
When people think of search engine optimization (SEO), many people think of on-page and off-page SEO tactics like meta-description optimization, backlink acquisition, and keyword research. Both on-page and off-page SEO work to authoritatively position websites and content so that their website can rank higher for specific keywords.
But the internet has grown more expansive and complex, and it is becoming more difficult for search engines to process all of the content on the web. In order for a search engine to rank your content, it’s important that they are able to find and process your web pages in the first place.
Because of this, SEO has also had to evolve and has become increasingly technical.
What is Technical SEO
Technical SEO is the practice of optimizing your website for search engine bots by making it easier for them to crawl, render, and index your web pages.
Technical SEO can include many different types of strategies including:
- structured data markup (schema markup)
- page speed optimizations
- rendering optimizations
The need for webmasters to implement technical SEO practices has increased as search engines struggle to understand and index all content for every website.
The Problem
In the last ten years, websites have become more expansive, interactive, and customized.
Because of this, many websites are not getting fully indexed by Google. In fact, a study posted on Search Engine Land reported, on average, 15-20% of a website’s URLS are not indexed by Google.
When a search bot gets to a web page, they need to crawl and render it in order to understand and index the page’s content. Once the bots understand the content, they can rank in search results according to the long list of ranking factors.
When a page has a lot of javascript search engines need to take extra time to run the page through a javascript renderer.
A large portion of the websites today use javascript to enhance the user experience. Google is able to render javascript — they are the only search engine that can — but it takes more time and can cause indexation issues.
When it comes to Google, efficiency is everything.
Google allocates a certain amount of time and resources to crawling, rendering, and indexing any given website — this is called their crawl budget. So, when a website is slow-to-load, or difficult to render, then fewer pages are included in Google’s index for any given time they crawl your website.
That means it’s going to take Google much longer to find some pages — if they ever do find them.
The Solution: Dynamic Rendering
Google is aware of this problem. That’s why in 2018 they announced dynamic rendering as a workaround solution to indexation problems caused by the increase in javascript content across the web and now provides Google dynamic rendering documentation and best practice guidelines.
What is Dynamic Rendering?
Dynamic rendering is when two versions of your site are created and then served dynamically depending on the user-agent that calls it.
Users are served a user-friendly version of the page with CSS and javascript code to enhance the user experience.
Google crawlers are served a bot-friendly, pre-rendered, static-HTML version of the page so that they can quickly crawl and index each page.
BENEFITS OF DYNAMIC RENDERING
So how does dynamic rendering actually benefit SEO rankings and overall business?
Help Google crawl your website more quickly, and get the most out of your crawl budget.
Google budgets a certain amount of time and resources for each website. As mentioned above, if your website is difficult to render and crawl, then it’s likely the crawl rate will be lower, not all of your pages will be indexed by search engine crawlers, and your content won’t appear in Google search results.
More content crawled and indexed by search engine bots, without compromising a quality user experience.
With dynamic rendering, search engine bots are able to crawl and index your website much more quickly and effectively. Because search engine bots are able to use your crawl budget more efficiently, they can index more URLs and content on each page, effectively solving indexation issues.
Higher returns on content investments
More content indexed in Google means a higher return on investment for your content marketing efforts and investments made into your organic search channel.
Dynamic rendering is associated with a higher number of organic ranking keywords, and an increase in organic impressions, clicks, and ultimately conversions.
Remember, you can employ the best writers, and produce the best content, but if Google can’t crawl your content, then no one will see it in Google search.
Sites That Should Use Dynamic Rendering
Here is a list of types of websites that benefit the most from dynamic rendering to help you determine if it is the right solution for your website.
Dynamic Rendering is recommended for:
- Large sites with rapidly changing content that requires quick indexing
- Websites that rely on modern javascript functionality
- Websites that rely on social media sharing and chat applications that require access to page content
How To Start Using Dynamic Rendering
In order to reap the benefits of dynamic rendering, you’ll need to follow the Google guidelines for implementation. Google provides step-by-step instructions on how to configure dynamic rendering for your website, from setting it up, to verifying your configuration and troubleshooting through issues.
Another option is to use a dynamic rendering software solution. If you use a dynamic renderer with support staff, they’ll be able to help you set it up on your website and make sure that it’s running effectively so you get the best results.
Guest Author: Lindsey Nelson is a content marketing coordinator at Huckabuy—an SEO software platform that automates Google’s key technical SEO initiatives including structured data, dynamic rendering, & page speed.
The post How Dynamic Rendering Can Help SEO Efforts and ROI appeared first on Jeffbullas’s Blog.
This content was originally published here.