Should My PreRendered Page Be Visually Appealing?
I’m currently using Prerender.io for a large React site. However, I’ve noticed that the prerendered versions sometimes don’t fully apply all the CSS styles. This site is older and mixes various methods of styling, such as Emotion and imported styles, which complicates things. Although I’d love to undertake a rebuild, that’s not an option unless the client specifically requests it.
The preRendered page doesn’t look very polished, but if this content is primarily for bots, does its appearance even matter?
2 responses to “Is it necessary for my PreRendered page to look good?”
When using a service like Prerender.io for a large React site, ensuring that your prerendered pages look good can indeed play a significant role, not just for aesthetics but for functionality and SEO purposes. Here’s why and how to manage it effectively:
Why Should Your Prerendered Page Look Good?
Indexation Render: Search engines like Google consider how a webpage is rendered, not just its raw HTML. Missing or wrongly applied styles might affect the understanding of the page’s content and structure, potentially impacting SEO.
Social Media Sharing and Previews:
Visual Content: If your prerendered page includes rich media (graphics, images), proper rendering ensures that these are presented correctly in shared posts.
Debugging and Consistency:
Spotting Issues: A visually inconsistent prerendered page can serve as an early indicator of broken links, missing assets, or JavaScript errors that might not be immediately obvious.
User Experience for Alternative Browsers:
How to Address CSS Issues in Prerendered Pages:
Consider aligning your styling methods. If mixing libraries (like Emotion and imported styles) is causing inconsistency, especially on a large scale, aim to standardize on a single method if possible.
Use CSS-in-JS Libraries Properly:
Ensure that libraries like Emotion are properly hydrated on the server render. This often requires correct server-side setup to match client-side rendering.
Optimize the Critical Path CSS:
Extract critical CSS for important parts of the page and inline them to ensure they are loaded before other CSS files. This can help render critical components properly from the get-go.
Check Rendering Configuration:
While it’s true that pre-rendered pages are primarily aimed at search engine bots to enhance SEO performance, the visual appeal should not be completely overlooked. Here are a couple of reasons why:
1. **User Experience (UX)**: Although the bots are critical for indexing, the end-users are ultimately the ones interacting with your content. If they land on a pre-rendered page that looks unrefined, it can lead to higher bounce rates, affecting dwell time and potentially harming your site’s SEO in the long run.
2. **Progressive Enhancement**: Consider focusing on a progressive enhancement strategy. This allows for a basic yet visually coherent version of your site to be displayed initially (enabling bots to understand the content), while the enhanced styles load seamlessly in the background for users. This way, you can maintain a balance between SEO and user engagement.
Additionally, it might be helpful to selectively identify CSS styles that are critical for the initial rendering and ensure they are prioritized during the pre-rendering process. This could improve the visual fidelity of your prerendered pages without needing a complete overhaul.
Engaging in incremental improvements can help enhance both the bot’s perception and the user experience without overtaxing resources or changing foundational elements that might disrupt current operations.