Webinar: Practical Rendering SEO Explained with Bartosz Góralewicz, Martin Splitt, and Jason Barnard

In this practical and accessible discussion, Jason Barnard brought together two of the industry’s leading voices on rendering SEO to explain how Google processes modern websites and why rendering plays a critical role in search visibility.

October 7, 2021 - Jason Barnard hosted a webinar featuring Bartosz Góralewicz, CEO of Onely, and Martin Splitt, Developer Advocate at Google Search Relations. Published by Duda, the session explored how Google’s rendering infrastructure works and what website owners need to understand to ensure their content is properly indexed and understood by search engines.

Although rendering is often viewed as a highly technical topic, the discussion focused on practical explanations and real-world examples that made the subject accessible to marketers, business owners, developers, and SEO professionals alike.

Why Rendering Matters for SEO

A central theme throughout the webinar was that rendering is a critical stage in Google’s indexing process.

Martin Splitt explained that after Google crawls a page, it must render the content by processing resources such as CSS, JavaScript, images, and other page elements. If rendering fails or is incomplete, Google may not fully understand or index the page’s content.

Bartosz Góralewicz highlighted how rendering issues can contribute to partial indexing, particularly on large websites with complex JavaScript implementations. Even minor technical problems can prevent important content from being discovered and indexed correctly.

The discussion reinforced an important message for website owners:

If Google cannot properly render a page, it may struggle to understand, index, and rank that content.

Understanding Google’s Rendering Process

One of the most memorable moments of the webinar came when Martin Splitt used a cooking analogy to explain rendering.

He compared HTML to a recipe containing instructions, while assets such as images, JavaScript files, CSS, and videos act as the ingredients. Crawling retrieves the recipe, while rendering is the process of assembling those ingredients into the final webpage users see in their browsers.

This explanation helped demystify a process that is often described using technical terminology.

The webinar outlined Google’s general workflow:

• Discovering URLs
• Crawling pages
• Rendering content
• Indexing documents
• Ranking results

Understanding these stages helps website owners identify where technical issues may interrupt Google’s ability to process content effectively.

Rendering Is More Than JavaScript

A significant point raised during the discussion was that rendering should not be viewed solely as a JavaScript issue.

Martin explained that rendering includes the interpretation of all visual and structural elements on a webpage, including:

• Text content
• Navigation menus
• Images
• Videos
• Layout structures
• Interactive elements

Because Google uses rendered page layouts to understand content structure and importance, rendering affects far more than JavaScript execution alone.

The conversation highlighted how page layout can influence Google’s understanding of which content is most important on a page and how that content contributes to search visibility.

The Cost of Heavy Rendering

Another major topic was the computational cost of rendering.

Martin Splitt explained that rendering consumes resources not only for Google but also for website visitors. Pages that require excessive JavaScript execution or complex layouts demand more CPU power, resulting in slower experiences for both search engines and users.

The webinar explored how:

• Large JavaScript bundles can delay rendering.
• Excessive resource requests increase processing time.
• Heavy layouts consume more computing power.
• Complex rendering can slow indexing on large websites.

For website owners, simplifying rendering requirements can improve both SEO performance and user experience.

Website Builders Versus Custom Development

The discussion also examined how website platforms influence rendering performance.

Martin noted that website builders and CMS platforms provide an important advantage: users automatically benefit when the platform provider improves performance and rendering efficiency. By contrast, organisations running fully custom-built websites must implement and maintain those optimisations themselves.

At the same time, the speakers acknowledged that platforms may introduce unnecessary code or features that some websites never use, creating a trade-off between convenience and flexibility.

The conversation provided valuable perspective for businesses evaluating whether to use website builders or custom development frameworks.

Practical Recommendations for Better Rendering SEO

Throughout the webinar, Bartosz Góralewicz and Martin Splitt shared practical ways to improve rendering efficiency.

Key recommendations included:

• Reducing unnecessary JavaScript.
• Minimising requests for external resources.
• Providing important information in the initial HTML whenever possible.
• Specifying image dimensions to reduce rendering overhead.
• Avoiding client-side changes that create inconsistencies between source code and rendered content.
• Ensuring important SEO signals such as titles, canonicals, and structured data are available early in Google’s processing pipeline.

These recommendations were presented as practical actions that can help Google process content more efficiently while also improving user experience.

Rendering SEO and the Future of Search

The webinar concluded with a broader message about the relationship between technical SEO and user experience.

Optimising rendering is not simply about helping Google. The same improvements that make websites easier for Google’s systems to process often make them faster, more accessible, and more usable for real visitors.

By understanding how rendering fits into Google’s indexing pipeline, website owners can build sites that are easier to discover, easier to crawl, and ultimately more visible in search results.

Watch the Full Webinar

Practical Rendering SEO Explained Webinar

Published by: Duda. Guests:  Bartosz Góralewicz ,  Martin Splitt . Host: Jason Barnard. October 7, 2021.