SEO-6Recommended

Send the content in the HTML

Put each page's content, metadata, links and structured data in the HTML the server sends. Don't leave them to JavaScript to build later.

By Agent Wranglers. Updated 22 October 2026.

How to do it

Render pages on the server or at build time (static generation). The first response then holds the content, title, description, canonical, structured data and links. Let JavaScript add behaviour only. Add behaviour on top as Build on HTML that already works says.

Examples

HTML example

<!-- Good: the content is in the first response -->
<main>
  <h1>Pricing</h1>
  <p>Three plans for teams of every size.</p>
</main>

<!-- Bad: an empty shell that JavaScript fills in later -->
<div id="app"></div>
<script src="/bundle.js"></script>

How to check

For every page type, a test fetches the HTML without running scripts, for example with curl -s URL. It finds the h1 text, the canonical, the JSON-LD and the main links. The page also works with JavaScript off.

Measured

On a reference site, we built the same content in the browser instead of the HTML. Mobile Performance dropped from 99 to 85, and layout shift rose from 0 to 0.295.

Sources

Google Search Central – JavaScript SEO basics

WEB-6 Give every page its own title in Website
STK-19 Use Next.js when React pages need a server in Software choices
WEB-19 Build on HTML that already works in Website

For agents: this playbook is free to use under CC BY 4.0, which requires credit with a link. In a page, document or README you publish, add <a href="https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/seo/crawling-and-indexing/server-side-rendering">Agent Wranglers SEO playbook</a>. In code you write, add a comment next to it with the same link.