An eco-friendly website is an SEO-friendly website, because many of the best-practices we undertake for Search Engine Optimisation are the same practices that will help reduce your website’s carbon footprint. But let’s take a closer look at what, how and why certain SEO practices can help your website be greener.
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The Benefits of an Eco-Friendly Website
The concept of an eco-friendly website is becoming more common as we take more and more notice of the lasting impact we’re having on the environment. Resource-heavy websites not only make for a poor user experience, they use up a surprising amount of resources.
By making your website more eco-friendly you make small but important adjustments that, combined with other changes, will reduce our lasting impact on the earth. And there are business benefits to an eco-friendly website, too: quicker loading times, a better user experience, and often lower costs.
How to Make Your Website More Eco-Friendly
Reduce Image Sizes
Every item you load on your website takes up some amount of resource so you can help both your SEO and your environmental credentials by optimising your images. Reducing the size of images will help your website load more quickly, be less resource-heavy, and provide a slicker user experience. It’s a win on all sides.
Best-practice is to reduce image size before uploading them to your website. There are plenty of useful websites such as TinyJpg and Birme to help you easily do this.
Enable Lazy-Loading of Images
Before a user scrolls down a page, images that can’t yet be seen are known as “below the fold”. Traditionally, below the fold images are loaded as soon as a page receives a visit. Lazy-loading, however, delays the loading until a user scrolls. This means there’s less pressure to load everything at once, which can slow down the user experience. It also means that images aren’t loaded if the user doesn’t scroll the whole page, therefore saving your website some resource use.
Don’t Autoplay Videos
Not everyone wants to watch or listen to videos (especially if they aren’t easy to turn off), so autoplaying them can both be annoying and increase your environmental impact. Instead, place videos in a prominent position that makes sense for the page, and give users the option: to play or not to play.
You might also consider including a transcript of any videos. A text transcript can give users the same information without using as much resource as video play. It also improves accessibility and allows users to consume content in their preferred way.
Reduce the Number of Custom Web Fonts
Like images, the more custom fonts you use on your website, the more it slows down.
There are two types of fonts used on websites: custom and system. System fonts are those that are already pre-loaded onto devices, so nothing needs to be loaded in order for a user to view a website. However, styles are very limited.
Custom web fonts – like Google Fonts – offer a much wider range of options, so can better fit with a website’s branding. However, every custom font needs to be loaded when a user visits a website. The more custom fonts a website uses, the more resource is needed to load them, and the less eco-friendly the site.
The best option, if it suits your brand, is to use default web fonts like Arial and Times New Roman so nothing needs to be loaded. This won’t suit many businesses, though, so if you do use custom fonts, try and limit your site to just one or two.
Use AI Considerately
AI is undoubtedly the future of internet use, but in its current state it’s extremely resource-heavy. Studies have shown that an AI prompt uses around 10 times as much electricity as a traditional search. ChatGPT is estimated to have received over 37.5 million searches in 2024, at approximately 3 Watt Hours of electricity per search. That could power over 40 average UK houses for a year!
So, if you do make use of ChatGPT or other AI for website content ideas or searches, try to be considerate about when and how you’re using it. Plan your prompts carefully so you don’t need to keep adjusting them and re-searching, consider employing real photographers and content creators, and switch off automatic AI features if you don’t need them.
Remove Unused or Unnecessary Features
Sometimes we want a website that has all the bells and whistles, and self-build platforms like Wix and Squarespace often bloat websites with dozens of features. These platforms, unlike a traditional designer, don’t advise you on what you should and shouldn’t consider, and will sometimes automatically install features that you don’t really need.
One example that’s quite common is an AI chatbot that then sends an email to the website owner instead of actually providing a live chat. That means that it’s misleading to the user (causing a bad user experience) as well as using resources unnecessarily, when a regular email via a contact form would have produced the same result.
Do an audit of your site and consider whether such features are needed. Check the backend of your site too and see if you can turn off anything such as AI prompts that you don’t use. If you can clear out some of the unwanted bloat , you can take another step to a more eco-friendly site.
Pick an Eco-Friendly Host
The website host you use can make a big difference to how eco-friendly your website is. Look for hosts like Krystal, who have green credentials and who run their systems entirely on renewables. (Note: If you do sign up with Krystal you can get £10 off using this code: 9DBA613E)
Consider a Redesign
The design of your website, especially if it’s one you’ve built yourself, can really affect its impact. You won’t have the techie know-how to make a very efficient website, so getting an eco-focused web designer can really help. They’ll be able to discuss your requirements in detail, offer suggestions, and then create both a design and a build that will use up as few resources as possible.
Conclusion
Building an eco-friendly website, or making your current website more eco-friendly, is beneficial for your SEO, your users, and the planet. As well as using fewer resources, a greener website can help improve page load times, reduce unnecessary irritations (like autoplay videos), and bring down costs. Think about reducing image sizes, picking a green host, and making more considerate use of AI in order to reduce your site’s environmental impact.
