Next.js vs React for SEO: Why Next.js is better for SEO?

SEO is a crucial aspect of web development, as it helps to increase a website's visibility and traffic through search engine rankings. 

When it comes to choosing the right tools for building SEO-friendly web applications, Next.js vs React are often pinned against each other. While both have their advantages, one tool stands out as the better choice for SEO. 

Read on to find out which one. Oh, but there’s a spoiler in the title… Nevertheless, we still have lots of useful info!

Community opinion

Reddit

Next.js does mostly take care of one of the three pillars of SEO optimization. The technical part. It gets your web app SEO-ready with some of the best practices today.

SEO and web development

SEO is still a very important aspect of web development because it improves your website's visibility and accessibility to search engines. Basically, you optimize various aspects of your website, including its structure, content, and performance, to improve its ranking in search engine results pages. 

Why SEO optimization is necessary

Here's a list of reasons why SEO optimization is necessary for your website:

• It improves search engine rankings and visibility
• You target specific keywords relevant to your business
• You get more website credibility and trustworthiness
• It improves user experience through site optimizations
• It provides a cost-effective marketing strategy
• And, of course, it increases organic traffic and potential customer reach

Now, a bit more in terms of Next.js vs React when it comes to SEO features.

Is React SEO friendly?

React is a powerful JavaScript library for building user interfaces, but it can present some challenges when it comes to SEO. 

By default, React is a client-side rendered framework, which means that the initial HTML content is minimal, and the actual content is loaded and rendered on the client side using JavaScript.

This approach can make it difficult for search engine crawlers to efficiently index and understand the content of a React-based website, as they may have trouble executing the JavaScript and accessing the fully rendered content.

To make React applications more SEO-friendly, you need to either implement server-side rendering (so that the initial HTML content is generated on the server and sent to the client) or use static site generation techniques.

The overall consensus is that Next.js is generally a better choice for SEO compared to plain React. Here’s why.

Why Next js is good for SEO?

Next.js is a React-based web framework that has gained popularity for its ability to create fast and SEO-friendly web applications. It provides features like built-in support for server-side rendering, static site generation, and React server components.

Next.js is generally the better choice for building websites and web applications that prioritize search engine visibility and performance. 

Next.js SEO

But what exactly makes Next.js SEO-friendly? Speaking from Next.js website design agency experience, the following seven reasons will shed more light on why exactly Next.js is good for SEO.

Server-side rendering

Community opinion

Reddit

NextJS helps search engines find your site via SSR...your site serves pages with content rather than skeletons filled on the client side.

So, one of the most important features Next.js offers for SEO is the built-in support for server-side rendering. This means the HTML content is rendered on the server and then sent to the client. 

In React, for example, the rendering happens on the client side, requiring search engines to execute JavaScript code to access the HTML content. 

Server-side rendering in Next.js improves SEO simply by providing search engines with direct access to the HTML content, so you get better indexing and rankings.

Static generation

Next.js also supports static site generation, where your HTML content is generated during build time and reused for each user request. 

Pages that don't require user involvement for rendering, such as FAQ and About Us pages, benefit from this feature the most.

In general, static generation improves SEO by reducing the time taken to generate and serve web pages, which means faster load times and improved search engine rankings for you.

Streamlined features and tools

Next.js is also offering a streamlined package of features and free tools that are easy to understand and apply. 

These tools provide a range of nifty optimizations, including image optimization and minimizing cumulative layout shift, all of which are nice if you want to achieve strong SEO performance.

RSCs

In Next.js version 13, there was a much-needed introduction of React Server Components, which delivered an even more fine-grained approach to rendering. 

The feature offers the ability to choose to render components on either the server or the client, which gives improved control over page optimization. 

This control helps to reduce the amount of JavaScript sent to the client - you, in turn, receive faster page load times and improved SEO.

Streaming UI chunks

Next.js version 13 also introduced the concept of streaming UI chunks and sending of a minimal static page to the client, followed by the streaming of those data chunks. 

You significantly improve web metrics such as first contentful paint ( which is basically the time it takes for the first piece of content to appear on your webpage) and overall page speed, both of which are crucial factors in search engine rankings.

Image and font components

The next thing that makes Next.js SEO-friendly is the fact that the updated Image component includes native lazy loading, required alt tags, and better validation. 

Additionally, the Font component addresses common issues with font preloading, reducing cumulative layout shifts and improving SEO performance.

Improved performance on low-end devices

Finally, Next.js also offers improved performance on low-end devices with less JavaScript computation on the client side. 

This makes sure that web applications built with Next.js are accessible and perform well on a wider range of devices, which can positively impact SEO rankings.

Tips for SEO Next.js 14 edition

The latest Next.js release at the end of last year came with metadata improvements, Server Actions, and faster local server startup and code updates. We’d like to include a few additional tips for Next.js SEO for more advanced readers.

Programmatic SEO setup

Instead of manually creating a sitemap (which is a pain), Next.js lets you handle this programmatically. This means you can fetch all your blog posts and automatically add each post's URL to the sitemap.

The beauty of this is that it keeps your sitemap up-to-date without you lifting a finger every time you add a new post.

How to do it:

Create a `sitemap.ts` file where you define a function to fetch all your articles and generate URLs with their last modified dates.

Robots.txt configuration

Just like with the sitemap, you can set up your `robots.txt` file programmatically in Next.js. This file is crucial because it tells search engine crawlers what they can and can’t access on your site.

How to do it:

Use Next.js’s metadata route to define the rules for all search engines. This way, you won’t miss anything as your site changes and grows.

Static metadata setup for non-dynamic pages

So, for pages that aren’t gonna change much, like your homepage, you want to set up some static metadata. This is important for SEO because it’s what search engines see and use to rank your page.

How to do it:

Set this up in your layout file or on specific static pages so that every time someone hits your site, they see consistent and relevant metadata.

Dynamic metadata for blog posts

Now, for your blog posts or any pages that are dynamic, you want the metadata to be generated programmatically. This makes sure each post has its own unique metadata (like the title, description, image) that fits the content perfectly.

How to do it:

Fetch the relevant content (title, description) for each post and generate the metadata on the fly using the `generateMetadata` function in Next.js.

Static params generation for faster metadata retrieval

Lastly, by prefetching all the slugs of your blog posts, Next.js can speed up the generation of metadata, which means faster load times and better performance for your site.

How to do it:

Implement `generateStaticParams` to prefetch all slugs. That will make your metadata generation faster and smoother.

Next.js vs React: which one then?

Our final tip would be this:

When choosing between Next.js and React for a project where SEO is a priority, Next.js is generally the better option because of its SEO-friendly features like SSR and SSG. You can pick any Next.js example.

For projects where SEO is less of a concern, sure, you can get by with just React's ecosystem and flexibility. 

From our perspective, we used Next.js for developing our own Merge website since it’s dear to our hearts and we wanted to use the most fitting tool.

Every project is dear to our hearts, to be honest, so don’t hesitate to reach out and get yourself the best possible team for your product.