Green Optimization: How SEO Can Support Your Sustainable Business Goals

By Marie Nieves

In recent years, sustainability and environmental topics have dominated practically every facet of our society and, as a result, the business world. This is, by all means, a good thing since optimizing operations benefits the environment and makes the associated businesses sustainable.

Although it doesn’t look like the biggest offender in this regard, SERP optimization does entail a certain environmental impact, and contemporary consumer sensibilities are making big strides toward zero-impact expectations.

Modern consumers are also becoming very interested in these issues, and eco-friendly keywords are scoring excellent performance. Google, for its part, is all but enthusiastic about net-zero carbon ideas and will most likely start rewarding websites that adhere to these policies.

How can you use these insights to refine your SEO strategies and make SERP optimization even more effective? Let’s try to find out.

Looking for Eco-Friendly Hosting Solutions

The process of effective SERP optimization can’t be imagined without high-performance hosting solutions. Unfortunately, the infrastructure capable of providing instant loading and other features ranked by Google are, at the same time, the most power-demanding.

Fortunately, in recent years, things have been slowly turning around. Sustainable, renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and geothermal power are becoming more common in the hosting landscape. Opting for vendors present in this market will earn you a couple of PR points while putting SEO efforts on healthy, green foundations.

Working on the Website’s Efficiency

The math here is very simple – well-optimized websites consume less energy and load up faster. This simple fact is beneficial both for the environment and your SEO forays. So, you can lose practically nothing by ensuring your pages feel breezier. Where to start? Well, consider compressing the used images, optimizing the CSS and HTML coding, and making better use of caching.

You should also try leveraging cleaner, more minimalistic visual design as well as the increasingly popular dark mode. Even down to simple fonts (some are easier to display), you are making incremental but still noticeable changes.

Focusing on High-Quality, Evergreen Content

This may sound a bit on the nose since SEO is built around quality, high-performing content. What makes the difference here? This time, it’s the evergreen part. You see, well-planned topics with a good track record of keeping the readers’ interests (instructions, DIY tips, eco-friendly articles, etc.) put out stronger results over an extended period of time.

Sure, they do require a healthy dose of planning, and you will need to get in touch with experienced SEO services. But this long game will more than pay off since your content will keep driving traffic without entailing many updates or much maintenance.

Supporting the Eco-Friendly Economy

As we mentioned earlier, we have witnessed a surge of interest in environmental topics in recent years. But this relationship works both ways. Namely, the higher output of green keywords and articles is raising the profile of this sector, and as a result, giving environmentally-minded brands stronger competitive legs.

This added financial leverage also allows said companies to invest more resources into online marketing and agencies known for ethical SEO practices. So, by being a crucial part of this positive feedback, green SEO contributes to its success. Of course, to the benefit of all parties.

Enhancing User Experience

Focus on positive user experience has always been one of the most important priorities of the SEO industry. Out of the 200 ranking factors Google uses to put together the SERP results, the vast majority, at least in some capacity, involve interactions users have on one website.

So, you can see how green SEO procedures like optimizing web pages, ensuring more streamlined navigation, and making browsing through pages snappier fit this picture like a well-tailored glove. Of course, a user-friendly structure also makes the websites more energy-efficient and motivates the users to opt for these very pages.

Prioritizing mobile-first experience

Last but not least, we would like to remind you that for quite some time, mobile searches have been eating larger and larger pieces of the global SEO cake. This is good news since prioritizing mobile searches perfectly aligns with the concepts of eco-friendly SEO. Smaller screen entails contained energy consumption and mobile pages are, traditionally, cleaner and faster to load.  Also, it should take into consideration that mobile devices themselves use less power than PCs and laptops and they can be charged with renewable sources. So, mobile-first optimization should be one of the green SEO’s top priorities.

Wrapping-up

We hope these examples give you a better idea of what green SEO entails and how its main postulates benefit all parties involved in the process. Of course, expanding the presence of eco-friendly entities and focusing more on environmental topics also makes these ideas more credible and accepted in mainstream circles.

That might just be the most important legacy of green SEO. Disruptive changes can be made only when we manage to mobilize a wider population. And this cause is worth the fight.

Author bio: Marie Nieves is a passionate blogger with an eye for design, a flair for storytelling, and a love for culture. She contributes regularly to various blogs and online magazines, all while satisfying her wanderlust by exploring states and countries near and far.