Accelerating SSG in Next.js for SEO and Performance

Static Site Generation (SSG) is one of the best ways to achieve fast performance and SEO in Next.js apps. By pre-rendering pages as static HTML, your site loads quickly, is easy for search engines to crawl, and can scale effortlessly with CDN caching.

Why SSG Matters

Performance: Pages are served as static HTML, so load times are much faster.
SEO: Search engines can index complete HTML, improving visibility.
Scalability: Static files can handle high traffic without server overhead.

Next.js Rendering Options

SSG: Build pages at compile time. Ideal for blogs, docs, and product catalogs.
ISR (Incremental Static Regeneration): Update static pages periodically or on-demand.
SSR: Render on every request. Best for personalized or frequently changing data.

How to Use SSG in Next.js

Pages Router Example

export async function getStaticProps() {
  const data = await fetchData();
  return { props: { data }, revalidate: 60 };
}

This creates static pages and refreshes them every 60 seconds.

App Router Example

export const revalidate = 60;
export const dynamic = 'force-static';

This ensures static generation with automatic regeneration.

Tips to Accelerate SSG

Use ISR: Keep content fresh without rebuilding everything.
Cache Wisely: Preprocess data and cache API results.
Optimize Images: Use next/image for responsive, lazy-loaded assets.
Limit Prebuilds: Pre-render key pages, let ISR handle the rest.
Optimize Fonts & Scripts: Use next/font and load scripts strategically.

SEO Benefits

Better Core Web Vitals: Faster Largest Contentful Paint and fewer layout shifts.
Metadata API: Define titles, descriptions, and Open Graph tags.
Sitemaps & Structured Data: Improve discoverability with sitemaps and JSON-LD.

Final Thoughts

SSG should be your default for most Next.js projects. Combine it with ISR for freshness, optimize your assets, and use the Metadata API for SEO. The result: a site that’s fast, scalable, and ranks well on search engines.