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18 Real-Life Analogies to Explain SEO to Anyone

If you’re on a desktop device, resize your browser window to see this in action. You can also emulate mobile devices using Chrome DevTools (press F12 to access).

If a site isn’t responsive, it might overflow its container, similar to when mobile content spills off the screen or gets cut off. This hurts usability and accessibility.

13. Rendering is like building your sandwich

A technical SEO needs to understand the difference between raw and rendered code, and server-side and client-side rendering.

Raw code is HTML and CSS as it’s sent from the server (view-source in your browser). Rendered code is what users and bots see once a page fully loads. How it’s built depends on where the “sandwich” is made.

  • Server-side rendering is like ordering a sandwich that’s made in the kitchen and handed to you, fully assembled. Everything’s ready when it arrives.
     
  • Client-side rendering is like watching your sandwich get made at the counter. Your browser builds the page piece by piece.

Most users don’t care how the sandwich is made as long as it arrives quickly and looks right. But for SEOs, the difference matters. Client-side rendering uses JavaScript and often causes delays or visibility issues for bots (see my third analogy about JavaScript in a house).

Below, the left window shows a client-side rendered product listing page (PLP) with JavaScript disabled (the server-side rendered content), and the right window shows the PLP with JavaScript enabled (the client-side-render i.e., the made sandwich):

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Jasmine Hall

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Jasmine Hall

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