Static vs. Dynamic Websites: Why it Matters & How to Choose Which Works for You

Dynamic sites, although sometimes more complex and complicated to develop, offer an incredible opportunity to reach new audiences, deliver a personalized experience, and rank higher on the SERP for specific keywords. Key Takeaway: If you want to connect with your audience on a personalized level, embrace the concept of dynamic content and SEO and find ways to work it into your content marketing strategy.

Mohammad Omer

4/4/20234 min read

What is a Static Website? Static websites are sites that stay the same no matter who accesses them. Their content is fixed and does not change unless updated by the website developer. If your business prioritizes speed, security, and simplicity, you’ll want a static website.

What is a Dynamic Website? A dynamic website changes based on user access, preferences, and real-time data. Amazon, Reddit, and Facebook are examples of dynamic websites. They all change based on who is accessing them and what is happening at that time.

Core Differences

While each type of website serves a purpose, there are core differences between the two. Some of these differences include:

The way content is delivered

How interactive the site is

The maintenance requirements

The effect on your SEO priorities

User experience

For the sake of this blog, let’s turn our focus toward the effect each type of site has on your SEO priorities.

Advantages of Static Sites for SEO

Static sites are great for SEO because they don’t change. Their predictability makes it easy for search engines to know exactly what type of content is being delivered. And, since they don’t require complex site structures, they are also easier to crawl, which, in turn, makes it easier for them to be indexed.

On the other hand, dynamic sites are great for SEO because they have the flexibility to adapt to trends, user intent, and other time-sensitive information. Your site can use a large amount of personalized and unique content to improve keyword targeting and engagement metrics. Since the content is frequently updated, it also improves crawling frequency.

Advantages of Static Sites for SEO

Static sites are great for SEO because they don’t change. Their predictability makes it easy for search engines to know exactly what type of content is being delivered. And, since they don’t require complex site structures, they are also easier to crawl, which, in turn, makes it easier for them to be indexed.

On the other hand, dynamic sites are great for SEO because they have the flexibility to adapt to trends, user intent, and other time-sensitive information. Your site can use a large amount of personalized and unique content to improve keyword targeting and engagement metrics. Since the content is frequently updated, it also improves crawling frequency.

Dynamic SEO: A Quick Overview

Dynamic SEO, or adaptive content, is a form of SEO that changes the content based on the user’s search intent or interests. And if you want to claim that top SERP spot, and keep it, you need to get familiar with this practice.

Dynamic SEO is most important for those marketing a business site, blog, or ecommerce site – any site that attracts a ton of people for different reasons.

There are two types of dynamic SEO – user-based and site-based.

User-based dynamic SEO changes depending on the user’s activity, such as browsing history or location.

For site-based, the site’s rules change the outcome. The marketer sets certain parameters to display certain content, such as the time of day, stock market conditions, or weather conditions.

For example, your website might be the top SERP result for “running shoes” but does it stay at the top when the user types in “purple running shoes for athletes in the rain?” With dynamic SEO, it does.

Why is Dynamic Content Important?

Employing dynamic SEO tactics will help to keep your content coming up in places where consumers go first to find the freshest and most relevant information, places such as newsfeeds.

The easiest way to explain dynamic content and SEO and how it works is through examples.

For example, if you are a major retailer with a category for shoes, you’ll probably have many different subcategories, such as sneakers, dress shoes, sandals, men’s, women’s, kids’, etc.

Because there are so many of each, instead of manually updating you can use fields (category, color, brand, etc.) to dynamically pull information from your database to title, description, H1, H2, and more.

Additional fields could be added as well to include other things that a user might search for, such as price, location, or style.

SEO dynamic content is usually done technically through JavaScript, AJAX, or in some cases through a PHP system. It is just one more place you can use to optimize your site and start getting your content in front of the right audiences.

SEO for Dynamic Content: Key Strategies

If you want to make dynamic content work for you, you have to get familiar with the following key strategies. You can use these strategies to embrace dynamic content and use it to your advantage.

Dynamic Content & SEO

There is a direct connection between using dynamic content to target diverse keywords and user queries. If there is a specific keyword you want to optimize for, create content to attract the users searching for that word.

Let’s take a look at category optimization. On a given page, you’ll likely have:

A sidebar

H1

H2

A small bit of text

Category content

All of these places are opportunities to insert dynamic content that has been optimized for your specific keywords.

Handing Dynamic URLs and Canonical Tags

Another thing to keep in mind from an SEO standpoint is your SEO structure.

The first rule? Keep them short.

You want clear, keyword-focused URLs. This will help Google recognize the content of your page and better crawl and index it.

And no, we don’t mean that you should keyword stuff your URLs. Include only the most important target keywords at each category level. Cut out any useless filler words, too. Keep only the target keywords.

In this case, you’ll want the keywords in your URL to with the correct category – directory style:

https://www.dickssportinggoods.com/products/adidas-running-shoes.jsp

https://www.dickssportinggoods.com/products/blue-adidas-running-shoes.jsp

A few other notes on URLs:

Use hyphens to separate keywords

Never use more than 2,083 characters (and really, you should never get close to this number)

And here’s the thing about URLs: you want them to remain consistent, not dynamic.

Even the slightest change in your URL could mean a serious drop in rankings.