Sustainability continues to grow as a trending topic. Just when you think there's nothing more to talk about, another side of environmentalism pops up, giving us all something else to think about. Isn't that great? It's all an opportunity to make the world a better place!
If you've read any of the other blogs I've written this year, you'll know that my shared passions for SEO and sustainability truly collide, giving me an almost endless choice of blog topics.
Welcome to our latest, but by no means last, article: we reveal the opinions of SEO specialists on sustainability and how they can help…
Survey of the SEO community
Search Engine Land recently published details of a survey of SEO professionals, the goal of which was to explore their views on climate change and find actionable advice that can help everyone in the SEO community make a positive impact on the environment.
A total of 331 responses were received from around the world to the survey, including:
- Thirty-three percent of respondents were based in Europe, followed by the UK (26%), North America (21%) and Asia (11%).
- 62% of respondents were male and 34% were female.
- Respondents were fairly evenly split by job title, with 33% working as a freelancer/consultant, 31% working in-house, and 31% working for an agency.
- Respondents’ SEO specialization was primarily technical (47%), content (34%), and e-commerce (9%).
The survey was divided into 10 questions, from which we carefully selected the 7 most relevant ones.
Q1: How can I reduce my website's environmental impact?
When asked to rank the impact that certain aspects of SEO have on a website’s carbon footprint, here are their responses:
As you can see, the top three answers all relate to fairly well-known aspects of SEO that are becoming increasingly important within the community, while the bottom two answers relate to lesser known aspects, suggesting there is still opportunity for the SEO community to improve their skills and further expand their impact on sustainability.
Q2: Have you ever used an online carbon calculator to estimate the carbon emissions from your website?
Interestingly, 64% of respondents answered “no” to this question, indicating that a large portion of the SEO community is not fully prepared for the increased sustainability that SEO activities can bring.
Q3: Who within a company should be responsible for addressing their website’s carbon footprint?
42% of respondents felt that this was the responsibility of everyone involved, with only 4% feeling that the responsibility should fall solely on the SEO specialist.
Q4: If Google included the carbon footprint of a web page in its Core Web Vitals initiative, would that encourage more SEOs to reduce the carbon footprint of their clients’ websites?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, 78% of respondents felt that incorporating emissions data into Google’s CWV crawls would lead to more SEO engagement.
Q5: Agencies, is it okay to refuse to work with clients who are known to pollute fossil fuels?
82% of respondents said they would be comfortable refusing to do business with customers who are known to pollute fossil fuels.
Q6: Why aren’t environmental considerations on websites a priority within companies?
38% of respondents felt they had limited understanding of websites’ environmental impact, but it’s clear that low consumer demand, lack of interest and a lack of resources also play a role.
Q10: Do you think climate change will affect you personally?
90% of respondents believe that climate change will affect them personally, highlighting the widespread awareness of this global issue within the community.
What does this data show?
The survey responses help paint a picture of the SEO community as a whole: one in which there is a desire and drive to make a positive impact on website sustainability, but who aren't yet in a position to affect that change.
The paucity of experts studying the carbon footprint of their sites suggests that the important link between improving day-to-day site speeds and sustainability impacts is not being fully communicated to communities.
This can be seen from the answer to the first question: Green web hosting is definitely a good start to improving sustainability, but we think the bigger impact will be found in the other four answers.
More importantly, SEOs consider themselves the least responsible for helping to reduce their site's carbon footprint, even lower than the answer “nobody's responsible.” Yet SEOs are in a vital position to make that change happen.
Perhaps the answer to that lack of awareness can be inferred from the numerous experts who said that Google would be encouraged to take website emissions more seriously if it built a calculator within its tools.
Generally speaking, SEO specialists are guided by Google. When Google tells us to jump, we say “jump how high.” But when Google doesn't provide some guidance, the SEO community can be guilty of waiting for Google to tell us what to do.
Finally, we see communities that don't know enough about the environmental impact of their websites to believe it should be a priority, or that there is low demand for such services (possibly due to a lack of interest). This, combined with a perception of a lack of resources, results in communities that want to help but don't know how.
What needs to happen to make meaningful change?
I think the answer to this question can be found in the insight above: Right now, our community recognizes that climate change affects us as individuals, but we don't believe we can make a difference.
Therefore, educating ourselves must be the first step in driving change, so we can rapidly upskill the entire SEO community and highlight the important role we can play in digital sustainability.
Once we get some momentum in that regard, it will be much easier to educate other disciplines, especially developers but also project managers, and we will be able to bring different professionals together to present this subject to clients.
These important changes will help address the perceived obstacles to prioritizing sustainable websites within businesses. Improving our own skills will make it easier to educate our clients on the impact and value of website sustainability. This will generate interest and demand for such services, which are already tied to improved site speed.
What does Elixirr Digital do?
At Elixirr Digital we're a bit ahead of the curve when it comes to digital sustainability. We've been using a website carbon checker for some time as part of our client pitches, but recently developed the ability to bulk assess URLs and generate a predicted carbon footprint for your website after improvements.
Additionally, we are upskilling our entire team to discuss website sustainability with clients through in-house team training and regular knowledge sharing sessions.
In May, we hosted a webinar introducing clients and prospects to the importance of sustainability. The webinar highlighted the role SEO specialists play in driving meaningful change and better aligning business and customer interests.
We also hope to expand this session to other external audiences and spread knowledge about digital sustainability as much as possible.
Watch our free digital sustainability webinar recording to gain exclusive insights, or explore our digital sustainability consulting services to see how we can help you make a difference.