Rendering Modes in Nuxt: SPA, SSR, SSG

Google can render JavaScript. But it's slower and less reliable than HTML. Choose the wrong rendering mode and your content might not get indexed.

Rendering Modes in Nuxt

Nuxt supports three core modes plus hybrid combinations:

SPA (Single Page Application) - JavaScript renders everything client-side SSR (Server-Side Rendering) - Server sends HTML, JavaScript hydrates SSG (Static Site Generation) - Pre-render HTML at build time Hybrid - Mix modes per route

SPA: Client-Side Rendering

export default defineNuxtConfig({
  ssr: false
})

Google's crawler downloads JavaScript, waits for execution, then indexes. This adds 5-10 seconds to indexing time.

✅ Good for:

• Internal dashboards
• Apps behind authentication
• Content that shouldn't be indexed

❌ Don't use for:

• Marketing pages
• Blog posts
• Product catalogs
• Anything you want in Google

Common mistake: Launching a SPA site expecting Google to index it immediately. You'll wait weeks longer than SSR.

SSR: Server-Side Rendering

export default defineNuxtConfig({
  ssr: true // Default in Nuxt
})

Server generates HTML on each request. Google gets immediate content.

✅ Good for:

• Dynamic content (user profiles, dashboards)
• Personalized pages
• Real-time data
• Content updated frequently

❌ Don't use for:

• Static blogs (SSG is faster)
• Documentation (SSG is cheaper)
• Landing pages (SSG serves faster)

Performance note: SSR requires server compute on every request. SSG serves from CDN.

SSG: Static Site Generation

export default defineNuxtConfig({
  nitro: {
    prerender: {
      routes: ['/blog', '/docs']
    }
  }
})

HTML generated once at build time. Blazing fast delivery.

✅ Good for:

• Blogs
• Documentation
• Marketing pages
• Product catalogs
• Content updated daily or less

❌ Don't use for:

• User-specific content
• Real-time dashboards
• Content changing hourly
• 10,000+ pages (build times get painful)

Build consideration: A site with 50,000 routes might take 30+ minutes to build. SSR handles this better.

Hybrid: Per-Route Configuration

Mix modes based on route needs:

export default defineNuxtConfig({
  routeRules: {
    // Prerender static content
    '/blog/**': { prerender: true },
    '/docs/**': { prerender: true },

    // SSR for dynamic content
    '/user/**': { ssr: true },
    '/dashboard/**': { ssr: true },

    // SPA for auth-only sections
    '/admin/**': { ssr: false },

    // Incremental Static Regeneration
    '/products/**': {
      swr: 3600 // Revalidate every hour
    }
  }
})

SWR (Stale-While-Revalidate): Serve cached HTML, rebuild in background. Best of SSG speed + SSR freshness.

Verifying What Google Sees

Don't guess. Check what Googlebot actually received:

1. Google Search Console URL Inspection

• Go to URL Inspection tool
• Enter your URL
• Click "Test Live URL"
• View "Screenshot" and "HTML" tabs

If the HTML tab shows <div id="app"></div> with no content, Google isn't seeing your page.

2. View Page Source

Right-click page > "View Page Source" (not Inspect Element)

✅ Good: Full content in HTML ❌ Bad: Empty div with JavaScript

3. Fetch as Google

curl -A "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1)" https://yoursite.com

Should return complete HTML with content.

Common Mistakes

Mistake 1: Using SPA for a blog You're making Google work 10x harder. SSG renders in milliseconds.

Mistake 2: SSR for static documentation Why run server compute for content that never changes? SSG is free to serve.

Mistake 3: SSG for 100,000 product pages Your builds will time out. Use SSR or ISR.

Mistake 4: Forgetting route rules Nuxt defaults to SSR. Set explicit rules so builds don't try pre-rendering your entire site.

Mistake 5: Not testing the output Always verify with Search Console. Your local dev server lies.

Default Recommendation

Start here:

export default defineNuxtConfig({
  routeRules: {
    '/': { prerender: true },
    '/blog/**': { prerender: true },
    '/docs/**': { prerender: true },
    '/**': { ssr: true } // Everything else
  }
})

Adjust based on your content update frequency.