What Is Dynamic Rendering? How Does It Impact SEO?

Last Updated on 31/10/2025

Have you ever wondered why certain websites emerge in search results while others remain hidden? The answer might be as simple as dynamic rendering.

But what exactly is this technological magic, and how could it affect your website’s SEO performance?

Let’s delve into dynamic rendering to understand how it impacts how search engines view and rank our web pages.

What is Dynamic Rendering?

Websites benefit from dynamic rendering, which functions similarly to a chameleon. It’s a smart method in which your website changes its appearance based on who is looking at it. A regular user sees all the showy aspects, such as animations and interactive components.

However, when a search engine bot starts crawling, the site swiftly changes to a simpler, no-frills version that the machine can understand.

However, being dishonest is not the point. It’s more like being fluent in two languages. For human visitors, the site communicates in rich, interactive JavaScript. Search engine bots use basic, easy-to-read HTML.

This dual-personality method addresses a significant issue with current websites. It allows programmers to create amazing, feature-rich websites for customers while avoiding search engine issues.

So, in simple terms, dynamic rendering allows your website to be both a people charmer and a bot whisperer simultaneously. It’s a situation that benefits everyone and may help your website improve its search engine rankings.

Is Dynamic Rendering the Same as Cloaking?

Cloaking and dynamic rendering are opposite concepts. One is a useful tool, while the other is a risky bet. Stick to dynamic rendering and maintain consistency in your content, and you’ll be on Google’s good side.

Cloaking is similar to displaying a page about pizza to users and a different page about burgers to crawlers. It’s all about deceiving search engines and presenting users with different results. This is why it is considered a black-hat SEO tactic.

As stated by Google:

“Googlebot does not view dynamic rendering as cloaking. As long as your dynamic rendering generates the same content, Googlebot won’t consider it cloaking.

When you set up dynamic rendering, your website may generate error pages. Googlebot does not consider these error pages to be cloaking; instead, it treats them as any other error page.

Cloaking is the practice of serving distinct content to users and crawlers using dynamic rendering. Cloaking may be defined as a website that offers a page about cats to people and a page about dogs to crawlers.”

Does Google Recommend Dynamic Rendering?

In 2018, Google tentatively approved dynamic rendering. Their response was: “Okay, if you’ve got a site that’s drowning in JavaScript and search engines are giving you the nod of approval, then dynamic rendering can be a choice.”

But in 2022, Google’s tune changed slightly. They’ve recently stated, “Dynamic rendering was good for an extremely busy moment, but it’s not your forever solution.” They urge for alternate choices, such as server-side rendering, which they believe is easier to maintain and produces more trustworthy results.

How Dynamic Rendering Works?

Establishing dynamic rendering can be a challenging task, as it requires a significant amount of time, resources, and technical expertise. A qualified and experienced development team is necessary to create a system that confirms the identity of each agent who visits the website and selects which sort of material to deliver.

Dynamic rendering may be implemented in three steps.

• To begin, install a dynamic renderer (for example, Prerender) to convert your dynamic content into static HTML.

• Second, you select the user agents that you believe should receive static content. Typically, this includes search engine crawlers such as Googlebot and Bingbot. You may want to incorporate others, such as LinkedInbot.

• If your prerendering service causes your server to slow down or increases the number of HTTP requests, you should consider creating a cache. Next, evaluate if your user agents need desktop or mobile content. You may provide them with a suitable solution by using dynamic serving.

At last, enable your servers to send static HTML.

After the implementation process, ensure that dynamic rendering is working properly. Here are a few items to check:

• Mobile-Friendly Test

This is one of Google Search Console’s set of tools. In September 2020, Google switched to mobile-first indexing for all domains. We can say Google prioritizes the mobile version of your website above the desktop one. For that reason, your website must be optimized for a mobile-first experience.

• Use URL Inspection Tool

To ensure your website is properly scanned and indexed, use the URL inspection tool, which will do exactly that.

• Fetch as Google

This is what you’ll use to assess the performance of your dynamic renderer. It helps you to ensure that each URL is correctly submitted for indexing.

What Types of Websites Benefit Most from Dynamic Rendering?

Now it is time to decide which websites benefit from dynamic rendering:

• Those websites that mainly depend on modern JavaScript features.
• Large sites with continuously changing content that require speedy indexing.
• E-commerce platforms with continuously changing stock and catalogs.
• Websites with social media sharing and chat programs that require access to page content, as well as those with crawl budget issues, particularly for large sites.
• Websites that provide information tailored to user choices or location.
• Those websites where using server-side rendering is difficult due to low engineering resources or funding limitations.

Now it is time to consider whether to opt for dynamic rendering. Here are some questions  to help: 

• Is your website’s content dynamic and changes quickly?
• Is JavaScript required to render all or some of your content?
• Are you encountering crawl-budget troubles due to huge or dynamic content?
• Does the server load exceed acceptable bandwidth, or does it affect dynamic content rendering?

However, it’s worth noting that dynamic rendering isn’t required for every website. It is largely a workaround for indexable, publicly generated JavaScript material that changes frequently or utilizes JavaScript capabilities not supported by some crawlers.

Before introducing dynamic rendering, investigate whether there are better, more long-term options for your unique case.

How Does Dynamic Rendering Help with SEO?

The primary goal of dynamic rendering is to enhance web pages that do not appear in SERPs.

As it is seen, users are complaining that Google is not indexing all or some of their sites, which ultimately impacts their SEO because they cannot rank.

In response to that, Google stated that the primary reason for not being able to index part or all of the information is the presence of JavaScript on specific websites. On the one hand, this has a general impact on website SEO. Also, Google cannot change its crawl budget. This takes us to Dynamic Rendering, which solves both difficulties.

Starting with crawl budgets, major search engines such as Bing and Google restrict the amount of time their crawlers may spend on a single page. They establish a time restriction called the crawl budget, which varies for each website. 

Googlebot crawling your website is a crucial part of any effective SEO strategy. SEO is the practice of ranking in SERPs to increase traffic to your website. Before you can appear in SERPs, your site must be crawled and indexed. If Googlebot isn’t crawling and indexing your site, your SEO efforts are pointless. 

Conclusion

So let’s wrap up!

By now, we understand what Dynamic rendering is and how it enables simple crawling and indexing of websites based on the searcher’s intent.

But keep this in mind. Dynamic rendering isn’t for everyone. However, if your website requires it, implementing the method may have a significant impact.

A quick, flat HTML rendering, designed exclusively for crawl bots, helps solve crawl budget challenges while significantly improving the user experience, particularly on JavaScript-heavy websites with a large amount of information.

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