With traditional React applications that are client-side only, when a user visits the website - the entire JavaScript bundle gets delivered to the client (browser). It works fine in the initial days, but as your website grows, the loading speed slows down because the entire JavaScript bundle needs to be loaded every time a user visits your website.

With Next.js, every individual page is pre-rendered by default, meaning that it generates HTML for each page in advance (on the server side) instead of having it all done by client-side JavaScript (browser). The rendering takes place on a high-speed server such as Vercel.

Each generated HTML is associated with minimal JavaScript code necessary for that page. When a user visits the website, the server sends a ready-to-rendered HTML response to the browser. The browser renders the page that is now viewable and begins downloading JavaScript that gets executed to make the webpage interactive.

Sizeable dependencies that previously would impact the JavaScript bundle size on the client can instead stay entirely on the server. By sending less JavaScript to the browser, the time it takes for a page to become interactive decreases.

The faster loading time not only results in a better user experience, but when search engine crawlers arrive at your page, rather than seeing a loading state - they will get the entire HTML of the page at once. It increases the likelihood of your webpage coming up as a top result in search pages.

Single page applications (SPA) allow users to interact with a webpage without the need to refresh it. By utilizing SPAs, you can significantly decrease the server load and enhance loading speeds leading to a better user experience.

React is a preferred framework for building SPAs, but since you're only constructing one HTML file, you cannot create multiple pages, each with its own unique value for elements like title and meta description.

The other issue is that when the browser initially receives all the HTML, it doesn't see all the content your application is loading since most of it is just JavaScript. While Google supports a basic level of JavaScript when trying to crawl webpages, it's unknown what that exact level is.

With the help of Next.js, you can take advantage of React's capability while also defining unique data for multiple pages, such as the title and meta description. The best advantage of Next.js is that it stores its head component within the content, unlike React.js, where you can't include anything outside the default root element.

Additionally, you can import this head element to any page in your application and provide metadata for multiple pages, making each of them more visible to search engines.

Simply put, Next.js takes care of everything to make sure that we are providing all the metadata where it is required, whether it be in the title, meta description, photos, or icons.

There you have it - top Next.js features to boost your website's visibility in search engines.

Even if you're starting out or have a website already, Next.js has everything you need to build fast, scalable, and SEO-friendly products.

If you're planning to build an SEO-friendly web application using Next.js, you can always seek help from an expert development team. Please feel free to schedule a call with one of our experts to discuss your project.