Does Inertia work for SEO heavy public sites?

Yes, with SSR enabled. Inertia SSR through a Node.js process pre renders pages on the server so search engines see fully rendered HTML, not an empty shell waiting for JavaScript. Core Web Vitals scores (LCP, CLS, INP) are excellent with SSR enabled because the initial paint is the server rendered HTML. We add SSR for public marketing pages and SEO sensitive routes, not for authenticated admin or dashboard areas where SEO does not matter and SSR adds operational complexity.