Next.js — The Hybrid Architecture (SSG/SSR) for Web Developer Modernization and Scaling React

Rate this content
Bookmark

FAQ

Core Web Vitals are a set of specific factors that Google considers important in a webpage's overall user experience. They include metrics like Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). Better performance in these metrics can lead to higher SEO rankings as they contribute to a better user experience.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures the perceived loading speed of a page, marking the point at which the largest content element is visible in the viewport. The ideal LCP threshold is less than 2.5 seconds for a good user experience.

First Input Delay (FID) measures the time from when a user first interacts with your site to the time when the browser is able to respond to that interaction. To optimize FID, ensure your site is responsive and minimizes JavaScript execution time. The target for a good FID is under 100 milliseconds.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures the sum of all layout shifts that occur during the visible part of the page's loading phase. To minimize CLS, ensure images and ads include width and height dimensions and avoid inserting new content above existing content unless in response to a user interaction.

Yes, improving Core Web Vitals can directly impact business metrics. Studies by Amazon and Walmart showed that even a 100-millisecond improvement in website performance could lead to a 1% increase in revenue, illustrating that better performance can result in better conversion rates and other critical business outcomes.

Google provides several tools to measure and improve Core Web Vitals, including Lighthouse, PageSpeed Insights, and Chrome DevTools. These tools help identify areas for improvement to optimize user experience and potentially enhance SEO.

Next.js is a React framework that provides features like automatic static optimization and image optimization out-of-the-box, which can significantly enhance web performance. Its support for static generation and server-side rendering also helps in achieving faster page loads and better SEO.

Lee Robinson
Lee Robinson
31 min
14 May, 2021

Comments

Sign in or register to post your comment.

Video Summary and Transcription

Today's Talk discussed the impact of Core Web Vitals on SEO and website performance. Strategies for improving Core Web Vitals include using Next.js, optimizing images and fonts, and measuring performance with tools like Google Lighthouse. The hybrid approach of Next.js allows for flexibility in rendering applications. Recent releases of Next.js have focused on performance improvements. Next.js Commerce offers an all-in-one starter kit for e-commerce. Vercel provides a tool for measuring real user experiences and identifying potential causes of performance issues.

1. Introduction to Core Web Vitals and SEO

Short description:

Today, we'll discuss how Core Web Vitals impact Google rankings in 2021. Core Web Vitals are essential for search engine optimization (SEO) and improving website performance. Better performance leads to better SEO and increased revenue. Let's dive in!

Hey everyone, thanks so much for joining me today. And I'm really excited to talk about how Core Web Vitals will impact Google rankings in 2021. My name's Lee, and I am a Solutions Architect at Vercel, and I lead DevRel for Next.js. If you haven't heard of Vercel, that's totally okay. Vercel is a platform for developers, and it empowers them to build great websites. If you haven't tried it out, I recommend going to deploy.new and deploying application in a matter of minutes.

But what we're going to talk about today is a little bit on these things called Core Web Vitals. We'll start with some background and introduction. I'll dive into these Core Web Vitals and how they'll impact your search engine optimization or SEO. I'll give some practical strategies for improving performance. And finally, after implementing those strategies, measuring that performance and seeing the changes that you've made. But before we can do any of that, let's step back and do some background introduction on why you should care about web performance.

So, back in 2009, so going back a little bit, Amazon found that for every 100 milliseconds of extra latency, they saw 1% fewer sales. So they were able to tie performance directly to a business impact on their sales. And just to reiterate this point, if we look a few years later, Walmart, when they saw, when they reduced latency by 100 milliseconds, it led to 1% in more revenue, and this was in 2012. So similar idea, similar results here. The bottom line is that better performance leads to better SEO, and it has a direct impact on your business.

2. Introduction to Core Web Vitals and Metrics

Short description:

The founder of Nomad List experienced a boost in SEO after improving performance. Core Web Vitals help measure user experience by focusing on loading speed, content display, and interactivity. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures loading speed, aiming for under 2.5 seconds. First Input Delay (FID) measures the time from user interaction to browser processing, aiming for under 100 milliseconds.

I love this screenshot from the founder of Nomad List saying, did Google search do any algorithm update? Because I woke up today and for some reason, you know, my, my SEO was off the charts. I was getting so many more clicks in Google Search Console, seeing the conversion rate from people coming from Google. So when you have better performance like they do on Nomad List, it's going to ultimately lead to better SEO, especially now with the introduction of Core Web Vitals.

So how can we measure this actual user experience of people using our site? Google has cared about performance for a long time, and they've given us many different tools to measure that performance. But when there's so many different tools, it can be hard to understand what are the most important things that I need to focus on, and what are the quantitative measures to understand what's good and what's bad? So really a breakthrough was made when the web performance working group worked with Google to introduce these Core Web Vitals metrics. We're going to talk about them here in a second, but really, they help you understand how good your actual user experience is by focusing on the end-user outcome, how they're actually perceiving your site. So how fast it gets in front of their eyes, if things jump around or not, how fast it reacts to input, and we're optimizing for the quality of the experience.

So Google and the web performance working group did this research, and they cited other research looking into HCI, human-computer interaction, to understand what are the most important metrics to look at, and that's core web vitals. First, we have Largest Contentful Paint. So this is the perceived loading speed of your page, basically the point in when the largest element comes in, typically something like an image or a video, so when you have a fast LCP, it helps reassure that your page is useful. It's getting paint on the screen or getting content on the screen quickly. And as I mentioned before, these core web vitals, not only do they tell us the what, but they give us some guidance on what is good, what is kind of eh, and then what is not very good. So we want to aim for an LCP of under 2.5 seconds ideally, and there's more information in the bottom right of these slides if you want to learn more and go more in depth.

So an example of this just to really show what this looks like is for Google search. Let's say I'm loading a page that's searching for Larry Page. You see I have my first Contentful paint, the first thing that I see on the screen, and then the largest Contentful paint comes in shortly after that. Plenty more examples of this on the web dev page as well. The next is the first input delay. This is measuring the amount of time from when a user first interacts with the page. So clicking on a link, clicking on a button or using some kind of custom JavaScript powered control so the time between when they actually click and when the browser begins processing those event handlers. And I think we've all seen a bad example of this. You click on an element and nothing happens when you click. You get frustrated and you click a bunch more times. It's just not great. We want to shoot for under 100 milliseconds ideally to have those interactive elements. To show this picture, tying this in with FCP, I know there's a lot going on here. So on the left, we navigate to a page essentially, and this is progressing from left to right chronologically. We navigate to a page, that navigation starts. We get some paint on the screen, and our browser is able to interpret that and understand that. And then you see in the middle, there's a point where the browser receives that first user input.

Check out more articles and videos

We constantly think of articles and videos that might spark Git people interest / skill us up or help building a stellar career

A Guide to React Rendering Behavior
React Advanced Conference 2022React Advanced Conference 2022
25 min
A Guide to React Rendering Behavior
Top Content
This transcription provides a brief guide to React rendering behavior. It explains the process of rendering, comparing new and old elements, and the importance of pure rendering without side effects. It also covers topics such as batching and double rendering, optimizing rendering and using context and Redux in React. Overall, it offers valuable insights for developers looking to understand and optimize React rendering.
Building Better Websites with Remix
React Summit Remote Edition 2021React Summit Remote Edition 2021
33 min
Building Better Websites with Remix
Top Content
Remix is a web framework built on React Router that focuses on web fundamentals, accessibility, performance, and flexibility. It delivers real HTML and SEO benefits, and allows for automatic updating of meta tags and styles. It provides features like login functionality, session management, and error handling. Remix is a server-rendered framework that can enhance sites with JavaScript but doesn't require it for basic functionality. It aims to create quality HTML-driven documents and is flexible for use with different web technologies and stacks.
React Compiler - Understanding Idiomatic React (React Forget)
React Advanced Conference 2023React Advanced Conference 2023
33 min
React Compiler - Understanding Idiomatic React (React Forget)
Top Content
Watch video: React Compiler - Understanding Idiomatic React (React Forget)
Joe Savona
Mofei Zhang
2 authors
The Talk discusses React Forget, a compiler built at Meta that aims to optimize client-side React development. It explores the use of memoization to improve performance and the vision of Forget to automatically determine dependencies at build time. Forget is named with an F-word pun and has the potential to optimize server builds and enable dead code elimination. The team plans to make Forget open-source and is focused on ensuring its quality before release.
Using useEffect Effectively
React Advanced Conference 2022React Advanced Conference 2022
30 min
Using useEffect Effectively
Top Content
Today's Talk explores the use of the useEffect hook in React development, covering topics such as fetching data, handling race conditions and cleanup, and optimizing performance. It also discusses the correct use of useEffect in React 18, the distinction between Activity Effects and Action Effects, and the potential misuse of useEffect. The Talk highlights the benefits of using useQuery or SWR for data fetching, the problems with using useEffect for initializing global singletons, and the use of state machines for handling effects. The speaker also recommends exploring the beta React docs and using tools like the stately.ai editor for visualizing state machines.
Routing in React 18 and Beyond
React Summit 2022React Summit 2022
20 min
Routing in React 18 and Beyond
Top Content
Routing in React 18 brings a native app-like user experience and allows applications to transition between different environments. React Router and Next.js have different approaches to routing, with React Router using component-based routing and Next.js using file system-based routing. React server components provide the primitives to address the disadvantages of multipage applications while maintaining the same user experience. Improving navigation and routing in React involves including loading UI, pre-rendering parts of the screen, and using server components for more performant experiences. Next.js and Remix are moving towards a converging solution by combining component-based routing with file system routing.
(Easier) Interactive Data Visualization in React
React Advanced Conference 2021React Advanced Conference 2021
27 min
(Easier) Interactive Data Visualization in React
Top Content
This Talk is about interactive data visualization in React using the Plot library. Plot is a high-level library that simplifies the process of visualizing data by providing key concepts and defaults for layout decisions. It can be integrated with React using hooks like useRef and useEffect. Plot allows for customization and supports features like sorting and adding additional marks. The Talk also discusses accessibility concerns, SSR support, and compares Plot to other libraries like D3 and Vega-Lite.

Workshops on related topic

React Performance Debugging Masterclass
React Summit 2023React Summit 2023
170 min
React Performance Debugging Masterclass
Top Content
Featured WorkshopFree
Ivan Akulov
Ivan Akulov
Ivan’s first attempts at performance debugging were chaotic. He would see a slow interaction, try a random optimization, see that it didn't help, and keep trying other optimizations until he found the right one (or gave up).
Back then, Ivan didn’t know how to use performance devtools well. He would do a recording in Chrome DevTools or React Profiler, poke around it, try clicking random things, and then close it in frustration a few minutes later. Now, Ivan knows exactly where and what to look for. And in this workshop, Ivan will teach you that too.
Here’s how this is going to work. We’ll take a slow app → debug it (using tools like Chrome DevTools, React Profiler, and why-did-you-render) → pinpoint the bottleneck → and then repeat, several times more. We won’t talk about the solutions (in 90% of the cases, it’s just the ol’ regular useMemo() or memo()). But we’ll talk about everything that comes before – and learn how to analyze any React performance problem, step by step.
(Note: This workshop is best suited for engineers who are already familiar with how useMemo() and memo() work – but want to get better at using the performance tools around React. Also, we’ll be covering interaction performance, not load speed, so you won’t hear a word about Lighthouse 🤐)
Concurrent Rendering Adventures in React 18
React Advanced Conference 2021React Advanced Conference 2021
132 min
Concurrent Rendering Adventures in React 18
Top Content
Featured WorkshopFree
Maurice de Beijer
Maurice de Beijer
With the release of React 18 we finally get the long awaited concurrent rendering. But how is that going to affect your application? What are the benefits of concurrent rendering in React? What do you need to do to switch to concurrent rendering when you upgrade to React 18? And what if you don’t want or can’t use concurrent rendering yet?

There are some behavior changes you need to be aware of! In this workshop we will cover all of those subjects and more.

Join me with your laptop in this interactive workshop. You will see how easy it is to switch to concurrent rendering in your React application. You will learn all about concurrent rendering, SuspenseList, the startTransition API and more.
React Hooks Tips Only the Pros Know
React Summit Remote Edition 2021React Summit Remote Edition 2021
177 min
React Hooks Tips Only the Pros Know
Top Content
Featured Workshop
Maurice de Beijer
Maurice de Beijer
The addition of the hooks API to React was quite a major change. Before hooks most components had to be class based. Now, with hooks, these are often much simpler functional components. Hooks can be really simple to use. Almost deceptively simple. Because there are still plenty of ways you can mess up with hooks. And it often turns out there are many ways where you can improve your components a better understanding of how each React hook can be used.You will learn all about the pros and cons of the various hooks. You will learn when to use useState() versus useReducer(). We will look at using useContext() efficiently. You will see when to use useLayoutEffect() and when useEffect() is better.
React, TypeScript, and TDD
React Advanced Conference 2021React Advanced Conference 2021
174 min
React, TypeScript, and TDD
Top Content
Featured WorkshopFree
Paul Everitt
Paul Everitt
ReactJS is wildly popular and thus wildly supported. TypeScript is increasingly popular, and thus increasingly supported.

The two together? Not as much. Given that they both change quickly, it's hard to find accurate learning materials.

React+TypeScript, with JetBrains IDEs? That three-part combination is the topic of this series. We'll show a little about a lot. Meaning, the key steps to getting productive, in the IDE, for React projects using TypeScript. Along the way we'll show test-driven development and emphasize tips-and-tricks in the IDE.
Web3 Workshop - Building Your First Dapp
React Advanced Conference 2021React Advanced Conference 2021
145 min
Web3 Workshop - Building Your First Dapp
Top Content
Featured WorkshopFree
Nader Dabit
Nader Dabit
In this workshop, you'll learn how to build your first full stack dapp on the Ethereum blockchain, reading and writing data to the network, and connecting a front end application to the contract you've deployed. By the end of the workshop, you'll understand how to set up a full stack development environment, run a local node, and interact with any smart contract using React, HardHat, and Ethers.js.
Designing Effective Tests With React Testing Library
React Summit 2023React Summit 2023
151 min
Designing Effective Tests With React Testing Library
Top Content
Featured Workshop
Josh Justice
Josh Justice
React Testing Library is a great framework for React component tests because there are a lot of questions it answers for you, so you don’t need to worry about those questions. But that doesn’t mean testing is easy. There are still a lot of questions you have to figure out for yourself: How many component tests should you write vs end-to-end tests or lower-level unit tests? How can you test a certain line of code that is tricky to test? And what in the world are you supposed to do about that persistent act() warning?
In this three-hour workshop we’ll introduce React Testing Library along with a mental model for how to think about designing your component tests. This mental model will help you see how to test each bit of logic, whether or not to mock dependencies, and will help improve the design of your components. You’ll walk away with the tools, techniques, and principles you need to implement low-cost, high-value component tests.
Table of contents- The different kinds of React application tests, and where component tests fit in- A mental model for thinking about the inputs and outputs of the components you test- Options for selecting DOM elements to verify and interact with them- The value of mocks and why they shouldn’t be avoided- The challenges with asynchrony in RTL tests and how to handle them
Prerequisites- Familiarity with building applications with React- Basic experience writing automated tests with Jest or another unit testing framework- You do not need any experience with React Testing Library- Machine setup: Node LTS, Yarn