A "static site" implies HTML rather than a JavaScript app.
With respect to JavaScript apps (React, Angular, etc.):
It's not clear these days because the major search engines don't explicitly clarify whether they parse JavaScript apps (or if they only parse high-ranking JS apps/sites. But 10 years ago it was a must-have to be indexed.
One theory on pre-rendering is it reduces cost for the crawlers since they don't need to spend 1-3s of CPU time pre-rendering your site. And by reducing costs, it may increase chances of being indexed or higher rank.
My hunch is that long-term, pre-rendering is not necessary for getting indexed. But it is typically still necessary for URL unfurls (link previews) for various social media and chat apps.
I'm going to shill my own product https://www.prerender.cloud because it's (mostly) solved this since Chrome headless was finally released in fall 2016.
If you can be patient enough to cache any state you might have in a special global var that gets serialized during the "server side render", then it works for any JavaScript framework that can rehydrate/reattach to SSR'd HTML.
For a similar headless Chrome project launched around the same time, but with a price-per-api-request model, see https://www.prerender.cloud/ (PDFs, screenshots, pre-rendering). MRR is about the same.
Messari | Senior Front End Engineer | New York, NY (NYC) | ONSITE | $130,000 - $175,000
We're building the front-page of crypto and looking for 1-2 experienced and opinionated front-end engineers who enjoy working with ReactJS, care about lightweight JavaScript payloads, fast renders, and minimal CPU usage (great client experience).
We believe crypto will replace conventional infrastructure. If you want to help us accelerate that process (and live in NYC), email me and Qiao: [email protected], [email protected]
With respect to JavaScript apps (React, Angular, etc.):
It's not clear these days because the major search engines don't explicitly clarify whether they parse JavaScript apps (or if they only parse high-ranking JS apps/sites. But 10 years ago it was a must-have to be indexed.
One theory on pre-rendering is it reduces cost for the crawlers since they don't need to spend 1-3s of CPU time pre-rendering your site. And by reducing costs, it may increase chances of being indexed or higher rank.
My hunch is that long-term, pre-rendering is not necessary for getting indexed. But it is typically still necessary for URL unfurls (link previews) for various social media and chat apps.
disclosure: I operate https://headless-render-api.com