Introduction
Search engine optimisation and performance go hand in hand. When visitors land on your site, they expect pages to load quickly and to see meaningful content without delay. Search engines reward fast, accessible websites with higher rankings, so the technical choices you make have a direct impact on discoverability and user experience.
Rendering strategies in Next.js
Next.js supports Static Site Generation (SSG), Server‑Side Rendering (SSR) and Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR). With SSG, pages are pre‑rendered at build time and served as HTML, which is optimal for SEO because the full content is available on page load. SSR generates HTML at request time and also provides fully rendered pages that search engines can crawl. ISR allows you to update static pages after deployment without rebuilding the whole site, giving you the flexibility to scale to thousands of pages.
Performance optimisations
Beyond rendering, Next.js includes automatic code splitting and prefetching so that only the JavaScript needed for each page is loaded and future routes are prefetched. React Server Components and streaming reduce the amount of code sent to the browser, improving metrics like First Contentful Paint (FCP) and Interaction to Next Paint (INP). A built‑in image component generates responsive sizes, compresses assets and serves modern formats, and metadata APIs simplify managing titles and descriptions.
Case study: Our experience
We replatformed our marketing site using Next.js. By combining SSR with ISR and optimising images, the company saw a visible improvement in search rankings and a measurable decrease in bounce rates. Developers appreciated the file‑based routing and TypeScript support, which allowed them to iterate quickly and maintain strong performance. This project shows how choosing the right framework delivers tangible SEO and business benefits.
Best practices and recommendations
To get the most from Next.js, cache dynamic data, serve content through a content delivery network (CDN), and audit third‑party scripts. Use incremental static regeneration for content that changes frequently and static generation for evergreen pages. Monitor Core Web Vitals with analytics tools and optimise for accessibility and mobile devices.
Conclusion
Next.js gives developers fine‑grained control over how pages are rendered and delivered, making it easier to build sites that are both fast and crawlable. For us, this translated into better SEO and a smoother user experience.