Rendering
What is Search Engine Rendering?
Once a search engine bot has crawled a page they will render it in order to run the code contained within the HTML in order to assess and understand the content.
Once a webpage has been crawled, search engine crawlers initiate rendering, which involves executing the code embedded within the HTML to evaluate the content comprehensively. During this rendering process, search engine bots also gather data about the overall quality of the website, which they subsequently use to determine the page's ranking in search engine results.
Every HTML page begins with an initial state, which is the first response from the server. Following this, the HTML is rendered, creating what's known as the Document Object Model (DOM). The DOM represents the page's state after any JavaScript elements have been incorporated. You can inspect a webpage's DOM using the developer tools in the web browser.
It's important to note that search engines like Google can only index and understand content that they can successfully render from a page. If a page cannot be rendered, search engines cannot use that content for ranking and indexing purposes. Therefore, it’s important to ensure that nothing is preventing content from rendering correctly.
Remember, if content is imperative for users this should take precedent over any fancy, JavaScript led, features.
For a deeper exploration of rendering, you can refer to this article by Jamie Alberico, which also provides recommendations for enhancing rendering effectiveness and reducing potential issues.