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SEO Agency
SEA Agency
Grow your business quickly with paid search (SEA).
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The agency
Green SEO is a concept focused on making SEO more ethical by reducing a website’s CO₂ emissions.
In web design, many techniques are linked to SEO and can reduce environmental impact over the long term. Implementing these methods can lower the overall energy consumption of the digital ecosystem. This approach not only involves actions taken by users, but also optimises how crawler bots interact with websites.
Green SEO can also include SEO measures for companies actively pursuing environmental goals. It is aimed at businesses that promote sustainability and act responsibly. These companies focus on CSR (corporate social responsibility) strategies and sustainable development.
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Over 5 billion people used the internet in 2022. Accessing a website requires energy, which puts pressure on servers in large data centres. This has an impact on the environment. With billions of website visits, this effect becomes significant.
Today, the digital industry accounts for around 2 to 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions. As this sector continues to grow, its share could increase in the coming years.
We are faced with a crucial question: How can we reduce, or at least slow down, the CO₂-emissions caused by digitalisation?
In general, there are small steps we can take, that have a positive impact:
But how can we act sustainably in the SEO field? There are numerous approaches we can consider.
With Green SEO, you can actively play a role in protecting the environment — regardless of whether you are an SEO expert or work in a completely different field.
Implementing a few small changes can have a positive environmental effect. They also help to create a more sustainable digital ecosystem.
Your commitment to the environment enhances your company’s image. It can also inspire others and create a sustainable cycle. However, be mindful and avoid greenwashing.
Greenwashing is a misleading marketing strategy. Companies attempt to appear more environmentally friendly than they actually are. While they promote actions that seem sustainable, they often lack any real environmental benefits. The goal is to improve the company’s image without doing much for the environment.
Sustainable SEO is important for businesses that want to not only improve their environmental footprint but also reduce costs. It lowers energy consumption, leading to lowered operational expenses.
Additionally, businesses can differentiate themselves from competitors. By adopting eco-friendly practices, they can also increase customer loyalty.
Sustainable and effective SEO techniques are valued by Google. These optimisations include various measures, such as improving load speed, using eco-friendly hosting services, and creating relevant content.
All these factors contribute to better rankings in search results, thereby boosting your website’s organic visibility on the SERP.
You can influence the energy impact of SEO by focusing on three main pillars: Technical, content, and external linking.
One of the most important steps is optimising the loading speed of webpages. Faster pages need fewer server requests, thereby consuming less energy. Additionaly, search engine bots take fewer resources to crawl your website.
Tips to improve the loading speed of your website:
Choosing the right hosting provider is crucial for sustainable web practices.
Data centres alone are responsible for 0.3% of global greenhouse gas emissions. They consume a lot of power for air conditioning to combat the heat generated by servers and other technical devices. To prevent overheating, they must be kept in cool environments. Sometimes, chemicals are used in the cooling process, which have a negative environmental impact.
To reduce environmental impact, providers can offer:
A sitemap makes it simpler for search engines to identify and index important pages. It shows bots the structural layout of the website and helps them crawl the content more efficiently.
The easier it is for bots to do their job, the fewer server resources are consumed. This not only improves website performance but also reduces CO₂ emissions.
Crawl budget refers to the number of pages a search engine can crawl on a website. A higher crawl budget means faster indexing of relevant pages. For green SEO, it is essential that only relevant pages are crawled, reducing energy consumption and CO₂ emissions.
Spider traps occur when crawlers get stuck in a loop. Crawlers repeatedly scan the same pages instead of finding new content. This wastes the crawl budget and prevents efficient indexing of other pages. By avoiding spider traps, crawling becomes more efficient, and minimises energy consumption.
A clear and well-structured website improves the user experience (UX). Visitors and search engines can find desired information faster. This saves energy as visitors spend less time on the page and bots can use their crawl budget more efficiently.
Internal linking also helps simplify site navigation.
Links to broken pages consume resources that could be better used for useful content. By fixing or redirecting these links, you can increase the efficiency of your website.
It’s important to clean up your website regularly. Remove unnecessary scripts and unused plugins. This reduces storage space and makes server resources more efficient.
Evergreen content remains relevant over time. It requires fewer updates and is less affected by changes in Google’s algorithm. Such timeless content reduces maintenance efforts for both users and search engines, thus lowering energy consumption.
In this case, quality is more influential than quantity. A few high-quality pages will strengthen your website better than creating many pages with little value. This strategy is more sustainable and efficient.
Recycling has made it to the digital landscape. Just like traditional recycling, try to optimise existing content rather than creating brand-new pieces. By doing this, you save on storage space and search engine resources, as the URLs are already known.
However, be careful to avoid duplicated content, which has a negative impact on SEO performance.
As we saw with content, prioritising quality over quantity can reduce your site’s environmental impact.
Black hat SEO involve creating thousands of low-quality links to influence a website’s ranking. This not only violates Google’s guidelines, but also goes against Green SEO principles.
An example of an aggressive link-building technique is “comment spam” on certain blogs. This method, also known as “Spamco,” is unethical and contradicts the principles of Green SEO.
Wondering how to calculate the CO₂ emissions of your website? Good news! There are several tools that can help. Here are some of them:
Note that some of these tools have been developed or supported by non-profit organisations.
At first glance, White-Hat SEO and Green SEO might seem identical. However, in practice, there are subtle differences.
It is unlikely that Black-Hat techniques align with Green SEO. Most of these techniques are neither sustainable nor environmentally friendly.
With growing awareness of environmental issues, the demand for sustainable solutions is on the rise. This raises the question of whether Google will place greater emphasis on these factors in its algorithm in the future.
However, doesn’t Google already promote high-quality, sustainable, and resource-efficient SEO strategies? Perhaps Green SEO is already part of the equation – just without an official label.
SERP
H1 Tag
trust flow
seo data
popularity index
link juice
alt attribute
semantic cocoon
meta description
internal mesh
robots.txt
duplicate content
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