Custom coded website - Next.js

[zekx]

Well, so what I do at the moment:
I generally "vibe code" websites via claude and sell them. But there are quite some problems I am running in to.

So, what I've noticed:
-I did an A/B test for my personal website. I used webflow first, then I relaunched the website with my custom version. Boom, the subpages wont get indexed, the rankings are significantly worse etc. - It just feels like smth isn't right.
-I have the feeling, that google doesnt see any content I post, because its just a fact that my new website has like 20 times better content, internal linking, architecture, content length and UI/UX.

I host them via netlify right now, maybe thats the problem. I also tried to fix it by changing the "use client" setting.

Do you guys have any ideas?

 

[nigunim]

This is usually not a Netlify issue. Most of the time, custom-coded sites struggle because Google has trouble rendering heavy JS, hydration, or client-side content compared to platforms like Webflow that output cleaner HTML. Check if your important content and internal links are visible in the raw page source, not only after JS loads. Also review crawlability, sitemap, canonical tags, and Core Web Vitals - many “vibe coded” sites look great to users but are weak technically for SEO.

 

[india]

Next.js might give you some issues for indexing if it use javascript to render contnet.

Check if you can see the content in source code of the website in chrome

 

[BlogPro]

I just posted a response for another user with a similar query. Please see if it helps you

https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/replit-architecture-indexation-issues.1819333/post-20806868

Please research two things - SPA vs SSR

SPA is a Single Page Application (which most Replit and of AI generated sites are built on by default).

In order for SPA to be rendered, Javascript has to be executed first.

Now most modern crawlers including Google are able to do that, but new sites have a lower crawl budget and thus indexing becomes a challenge.

Google parses Javascript in two stages before it indexes the.

In stage one, it extracts the html generated along with the Javascript. And in stage two, it renders the javascript to get the actual page content (this depends on computing power availability and can take weeks)

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/javascript/javascript-seo-basics

To verify if you're an SPA, open your site and right click and select "View Source" (Not inspect element). And see if you see the actual content there or just a single div.

If you're an SPA, you should switch to SSR (not sure if Replit can do it - but you can try prompting)

SSR is Server-side rendering. This renders the entire page at the server level. So, on a browser and for a crawler, the page loads like a normal html page, all ready to be indexed.

This plus additional on-site SEO integrations, make indexing easier and take up lower crawl budget.

 

[zekx]

Netlify is probably not the issue, but it could be. your indexing problems are likely unrelated to the hosting platform. focus on your sitemap and robots.txt. make sure google can actually crawl your content. check your console for errors too, and look into your internal linking strategy again

I have a sitemap, already submitted it to google. Google sees the sites but I am not sure about the content tho. Also, the internal links are perfectly fine and I have (I would say) a really good strategy for it as well.

I am just confused bro, like my content would work on any regular non vibe coded project. Literally, I ranked for my target keywords in the top 3 most of the times, when I used webflow but the website needed a full relaunch with like a higher range of content and keywords. And now the website ranks way worse than before. Not even 1/10 of the impressions I had before + only 4 of 50 pages are indexed. But I had 10 pages before on the webflow one and they made me couple of thousands impressions and quite a few clicks.

 

[doggyman121]

Well have you checked its creating the html for the site and that it renders in google console ?

 

[ads studio]

Honestly this sounds more like a rendering/indexing issue than a content issue. A lot of AI coded sites look great visually but end up shipping broken SSR, hydration issues, or JS-heavy pages that Google struggles to process properly.

 

[1SEOWarrior]

Your observation is quite right. Javascript has some issues regarding indexing compared to traditional html css sites. Regarding your concern about netlify did you check the page whether that is default got "no-index" tags?

 

[zekx]

Your observation is quite right. Javascript has some issues regarding indexing compared to traditional html css sites. Regarding your concern about netlify did you check the page whether that is default got "no-index" tags?

No, unfortunately its not as simple as that... Could it be that all the source code is put in the first line? Cuz that looks kinda weird to me.