Web development and performance
What is Static site generation?
Static site generation builds every page to a real HTML file at build time, so the server hands over a finished document with no work to do per request. It is the fastest and cheapest way to serve content that is the same for every visitor.
Also called: SSG · pre-rendering
Why it suits marketing and content sites
Most business websites show identical content to everyone. Generating that content once, at build time, removes the entire runtime — no database query per visit, no rendering step, no framework to execute in the browser.
What you gain
- Content present in the HTML, so every crawler and answer engine can read it
- No server-side runtime to secure, patch or scale
- Hosting that is effectively free on any CDN
- Interaction cost at the browser floor, because no framework hydrates
What it is not right for
Anything genuinely per-user — a logged-in dashboard, a live inventory count, a personalised feed. Those need server rendering or client fetching, and mixing the two per route is normal rather than a compromise.
Where this is covered in depth
A definition can only go so far. JavaScript SEO: the difference between what you see and what gets indexed covers this properly — 3 minutes, free, no email required.
Who wrote this
Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada and Pakistan. These definitions come from client work rather than from a content brief — where an entry describes a mistake, it is usually one found on a real site. More about how I work.