Question 1

What is Static Site Generation (SSG) in Next.js?

Accepted Answer

Pages are prerendered at build time into HTML/JSON that can be served from a CDN. Great for marketing, docs, and content that changes infrequently. Fast TTFB and low origin load. Updates require rebuild or revalidation strategies.

Question 2

How do you statically generate dynamic routes?

Accepted Answer

Provide a set of paths at build (generateStaticParams) and render those pages ahead of time. In App Router, generateStaticParams replaces getStaticPaths. Decide fallback behavior for unknown paths (404 vs on-demand generation).

Question 3

What content is a poor fit for pure SSG?

Accepted Answer

Per-user dashboards, rapidly changing prices without ISR, and pages needing request-time headers. You can still statically shell and stream dynamic parts. Pure SSG for personalized pages risks stale/wrong content and cache leaks.

Question 4

How does SSG affect SEO?

Accepted Answer

Prerendered HTML is immediately crawlable with stable URLs and fast LCP potential. Ensure metadata is correct at build. For large sites, build times and path generation strategy matter. Pair with sitemap generation.

Question 5

Build time exploded after adding 50k product pages. What do you do?

Accepted Answer

Don't SSG everything at build — use ISR/on-demand, incremental path generation, or hybrid rendering. Prioritize top pages at build. Generate long-tail on first request with revalidation. Watch CDN and origin costs.

Question 6

Lead: define a static content pipeline for a docs site.

Accepted Answer

MDX/contentlayer at build, generateStaticParams, preview mode for editors, atomic deploys, and CDN caching. CI builds content; previews per PR. Keep search index generation in pipeline. Measure build duration as a SLO.

SSG Next.js Interview Questions

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