Lack of Server-Side Rendering: SEO Challenges & Risks

As headless and composable commerce solutions continue to emerge, eCommerce brands are being encouraged to adopt these platforms to accelerate development, cut overhead costs, and deliver content faster. However, while these solutions often prioritize speed and flexibility, many lack Server-Side Rendering (SSR) of key pages and content, a limitation that poses considerable SEO challenges for search engine crawling, indexing, and ranking. This is particularly critical for enterprise-level eCommerce sites, where SSR can impact indexing, rich snippets, and Google Merchant Center eligibility.

In this article, we’ll dive into how lack of SSR impacts SEO performance, the challenges it presents for Product Listing Pages (PLPs) and Product Detail Pages (PDPs), why pre-rendering services are not recommended, and strategies for mitigating these issues.

The Role of SSR in SEO

Server-Side Rendering enables websites to load fully-rendered HTML, making content visible to search engine crawlers without needing to execute JavaScript. This facilitates faster, more efficient crawling and indexing, helping search engines accurately understand and rank the content.

With Client-Side Rendering (CSR), by contrast, content is loaded through JavaScript in the user’s browser, requiring search engines to execute this JavaScript to render the full content. While Google does support JavaScript, it typically crawls in two waves: an initial HTML scan and a secondary JavaScript rendering phase, which may be delayed or incomplete. This delay can prevent vital content from being indexed promptly, particularly for enterprise sites with a vast catalog. It is also important to note that not all bots can fully run and process Javascript, like Bing, which may impact your visibility in those search results as well.

Google’s own guidelines support SSR as a best practice, stating, “Keep in mind that server-side or pre-rendering is still a great idea because it makes your website faster for users and crawlers, and not all bots can run JavaScript.” [1]

Impacts of No SSR on Product Pages (PLP and PDP)

For eCommerce sites, Product Listing Pages and Product Detail Pages are essential for attracting organic traffic and delivering a great user experience. The absence of SSR on these pages introduces several challenges:

1. Incomplete Crawling and Indexing

Without SSR, critical product information may remain inaccessible to search engines, leading to:

• Lower visibility in search results, as essential content may be missing or delayed.
• Reduced number of pages indexed, affecting the overall SEO strategy.
• Missed keyword ranking opportunities because the content is not being crawled or indexed as expected.?

2. Limitations on Structured Data Implementation

Structured data, such as product schema markup, helps search engines better understand a website’s content and enhances search results with rich snippets (e.g., star ratings, prices, shipping and return policies, and availability).

For merchants optimizing for all types of shopping results, Google recommends placing structured data in the initial HTML for best results. Google warns that Javascript-generated markup can make Shopping crawls less frequent and less reliable, which can be a major issue for fast-changing content like product availability and pricing [2].

However, Google requires structured data for Merchant Center Listings to be present at the time of page load [3], a characteristic typical of SSR.

When structured data is dynamically rendered through CSR, it may not be detected correctly by search engines. This creates issues such as:

• Ineligibility for rich snippets, resulting in less visually appealing search listings, potentially lowering click-through rates (CTR).
• Reduced eligibility for features within Google Merchant Center product listings, which rely on properly implemented structured data [4]. With the prominence of Google Shopping in search results, combined with its recent experience overhaul, this could lead to lower product visibility and sales opportunities for eCommerce brands.

How Lack of SSR Disproportionately Impacts Large eCommerce Sites

Enterprise eCommerce websites with extensive product listings face unique limitations when it comes to crawl budgets and resource allocation. Google allocates a specific crawl budget to each site, which limits the number of pages that will be crawled within a certain timeframe [5]. For smaller eCommerce sites with hundreds or a few thousand pages, this budget is usually sufficient for timely indexing. However, enterprise-level sites often have tens or hundreds of thousands of pages. When these pages rely on client-side rendering, search engines may struggle to render and index content as efficiently.

Without SSR, the crawling process for large eCommerce sites can be hindered in several ways:

1. Delayed Crawling and JavaScript Rendering Queue: Google crawls the raw HTML of a page first and only later renders the JavaScript to extract the final content. For large sites, this delay is more pronounced as pages must enter Google’s rendering queue—a queue that can become bottlenecked when an enterprise site has thousands of new or updated pages to process. Smaller sites, with fewer pages needing JavaScript rendering, experience shorter wait times for content to reach Google’s render queue.
2. Inconsistent Indexing of Product Pages: When Google cannot crawl a significant portion of a site’s product pages within the crawl budget, the risk of incomplete or inconsistent indexing rises. For enterprise sites, this can mean that entire product lines are not indexed quickly, or at all, resulting in missed opportunities for organic visibility. Smaller sites, in contrast, may not feel this issue as acutely since their crawl budget is more easily met within Google’s regular crawl cycle.
3. Content Freshness and Product Updates: Large eCommerce sites often make frequent updates to product listings, inventory status, and promotions. Without SSR, these dynamic changes rely on client-side rendering, which may not be rendered promptly by search engines. For enterprise sites, delays in indexing these updates can lead to outdated content appearing in search results, impacting the accuracy of search listings and potentially deterring customers.

Why Pre-Rendering Is Not a Recommended Solution

To address the limitations of CSR, some organizations turn to pre-rendering services. These are typically costly services generate a static, pre-rendered version of the website that is served to search engine crawlers, while users still see the JavaScript-rendered version. While this can seem like a viable workaround, Google does not recommend pre-rendering services as a sustainable SEO solution due to the following reasons [6]:

• Fragility and Maintenance Issues: Pre-rendered content can quickly become outdated as product information changes. For instance, new pages may not be pre-rendered, and updates to existing pages might not be reflected, leading to inconsistencies.
• Limited Compatibility: Pre-rendering often works only for static content. Dynamic elements, such as personalized recommendations or real-time data, may not render accurately, impacting the experience for both users and search engines.
• Not a Sustainable Strategy: Google’s algorithms are continually improving at processing JavaScript. As these advancements continue, pre-rendering may eventually become obsolete or even counterproductive for SEO, leading to potential compatibility issues down the line.

Recommendations for Mitigating SEO Challenges Without SSR

While the lack of SSR poses challenges, there are strategies that can help improve SEO performance:

• Implementing SSR Where Possible: As of today, SSR remains the best approach for ensuring that all search engines can crawl, index, and rank content effectively. Prioritize implementing SSR for key pages, like PLPs and PDPs, and critical content.
• Utilize Dynamic Rendering as a Transitional Solution: Dynamic rendering can provide pre-rendered HTML to search engine bots while still delivering client-side JavaScript to users. This helps ensure crawlers receive a fully rendered page, even if it’s not as ideal as SSR.
• Manual Implementation of Structured Data: For sites relying on CSR, hardcoding essential structured data elements directly into the HTML can help meet Google's structured data requirements, though may be difficult to maintain for frequently changing content (product pricing and availability).
• Enhancing JavaScript SEO Practices: For sites using CSR, optimizing JavaScript is essential. This includes ensuring critical content is accessible to crawlers, such as anchored links, avoiding unnecessary reliance on third-party scripts, and using tools like Google Search Console to monitor the site's rendering performance.

By understanding these limitations and implementing the suggested strategies, eCommerce brands can maximize the potential of their chosen headless or composable commerce solution while maintaining a strong SEO foundation to remain competitive in search rankings.