I was working on a simple landing page.
At first, I didn’t think too much about the stack, I just went with Vite + React. It’s fast, lightweight, and the tools feel familiar. The dev experience was smooth as always, and everything worked fine in the browser.
But then I started thinking: how will Google see this page?
That’s when the issue showed up.
Since the setup was CSR (Client-Side Rendering), the initial HTML that gets served is basically empty just a <div id="root">. The real content only appears after the JavaScript runs on the client side. When Googlebot or any crawler visits, it initially sees a blank page.
Sure, Google can render JavaScript to some extent, but it’s never perfect. For something like a marketing landing page, that delay can mean your content isn’t indexed properly or worse, not indexed at all.
Switching to SSG for Better Visibility
So I decided to migrate the page to SSG (Static Site Generation).
It wasn’t as simple as hitting a button or asking AI to “make it static.” Some parts still needed manual optimization.
I spent time tweaking a few things:
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Image optimization - compressing and resizing for performance.
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Sitemap generation - to help crawlers navigate the site easily.
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Meta and content adjustments - making sure everything loaded in the initial HTML.
The difference was immediate. The page became lighter, faster, and most importantly, visible to search engines right from the start.
Now, when I check the source, I can see all the content without waiting for JavaScript. That’s how it should be.
Sometimes, using the “cool stack” isn’t the best choice.
Vite + React are great for apps, dashboards, or anything highly interactive. But when you’re building something meant to be found, like a landing page, SSG is the smarter move.
Fast doesn’t always mean effective.
And building something visible is better than building something fancy.