According to statistics, an average website produces 211 kg CO2 emissions annually. This is the equivalent of 1055 km of driving a car<\/a><\/strong>. And that is for just 1 website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are nearly 2 billion websites<\/a> in the world, according to Statista. These make the Internet the sixth largest consumer of electricity on the planet. As a result, on a global scale, it produces around 2% of global CO2 emissions<\/strong><\/a> annually, equivalent to the aviation industry<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To calculate your website’s carbon footprint, you can use one of the carbon footprint calculators, available online for free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once you’ve calculated your website’s carbon footprint, there are steps that you can take to reduce this number even further. Have a look at the actions below and think if you can implement the ones you haven’t already taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having a green hosting partner for your website is the first step to an eco-friendly website. If you\u2019re still deciding on your hosting provider, or want to check whether yours offers green hosting services, you can simply visit their website and look for green practices and initiatives, such as using renewable energy sources (e.g. wind and solar power) to power their servers, recycling or reducing waste, and similar commitments to the environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why is that so important? Here are some statistics that show how important is the role of your hosting provider in creating and maintaining an environmentally friendly website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An average website produces 4.61 grams of CO2 for every page view<\/a>. However, at SiteGround, we dedicate much time and effort to host greener websites. As a result, for websites hosted with us, each site visit amounts to approximately 1.7 grams of CO2 emissions<\/strong> \u2013 nearly three times more carbon-efficient than the industry average<\/strong>. Here\u2019s a glimpse of some of the things we do to achieve that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our data center infrastructure is powered by the Google Cloud platform which matches 100% of the electricity consumed by the servers with energy from renewable sources. This strategy ensures high redundancy, optimal site speed and sustainability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n SiteGround uses more than 10 data centers around the globe for hosting our clients\u2019 websites. The closer that server is to the majority of their website visitors, the faster their website loads for users, and the less energy it consumes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We constantly optimize our server software and develop powerful tools to maximize efficiency and minimize resource usage. Some of these tools are our in-house built CDN that caches site content on multiple servers on different continents, custom PHP setup that improves page load by up to 30%, SuperCacher that enables full-page caching to make websites up to 5x faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019ve already using a green hosting provider for your website, that\u2019s a solid foundation for having an environmentally friendly website. The next thing you need to think about is your website loading speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A slow website consumes more energy<\/strong> to load. If your website is slow, it will require a lot of processing power from the server, for every visitor that comes and tries to load it. Thus, your site produces more carbon emissions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Improving your site\u2019s loading times will result in less energy consumption, it will undeniably improve the user experience of your website visitors, and at the end of the day, you\u2019ll have a more eco-friendly website. Here are some practical tips on how to increase your website loading speed:<\/p>\n\n\n\n To improve your website\u2019s loading speed, you need to optimize the way you use images on your site. First and foremost, consider what images you use and reduce them by removing the unnecessary ones and\/or concentrating them into single files. Second, prioritize and load critical images first \u2013 those above-the-fold should load first, while non-critical images could use lazy-loading only after critical images or when they are needed. Next, compress images in size as much as possible, without compromising on their quality. Last, but not least, leverage caching for static images, in order to minimize redundant user requests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To speed up your website even further, leverage one of the most powerful technologies \u2013 caching. What\u2019s more, it can be applied on different levels of your website \u2013 on server and on browser level<\/a>. Server-side caching reduces the website\u2019s loading times by keeping a copy of the web page on the server. SiteGround clients take advantage of three levels of server-side caching \u2013 Nginx Direct Delivery for static content, Dynamic caching for dynamic content, and Memcached (for object caching). Browser-caching, on the other hand, can also significantly reduce your site loading times \u2013 when a user visits a website for more than once, their browser will load the cached version of the page, stored on their device.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To speed up your website even more, use a content delivery network (CDN). A CDN distributes copies of your website to users in different geographical locations by loading your website from servers that are located closer to the end user. SiteGround clients leverage our free in-house built CDN<\/strong><\/a> which provides their websites with blazingly-fast loading speed, requires no configuration on their side, and is easy-to-manage. But, surely, there are multiple paid CDN products and options out there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Decluttering your website should be just as common as spring cleaning your home. There are some pages, plugins, themes, redirects, files, content and more that slow down your website and increase its carbon footprint. Here are a few things to keep in mind when cleaning up your website:<\/p>\n\n\n\n First, get rid of unused plugins and themes, because of the straight-forward rule: \u201cthe less code, the faster your site\u201d. Next, remove outdated content and files from your site. These also take space on your site and further slow it down. Last, but not least, reduce unnecessary redirects that affect website speed by adding extra steps to the page load process \u2013 keep your pages and content a click away. To clean up your site even further, explore more techniques in our blog post<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even if your website is hosted with a green host and is optimized for performance, there are still other steps that you can take to make it even more environmentally friendly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When people search for your website on search engines, that requires a lot of energy. In terms of greenhouse gases, one Google search is equivalent to about 0.2 grams of CO2<\/a>. To put that into perspective, an average car driven for 0.6 miles (1 km) produces as many greenhouse gases as a thousand Google searches<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s why if you optimize your website for search engines, the end users will spend less time searching for it, which in turn will result in less energy spent on server requests, and ultimately a more environmentally friendly website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s explore the top three SEO practices you can try in order to improve your website\u2019s visibility:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your website structure is how you organize your pages and content into (sub)categories. Navigation, on the other hand, is how you guide your users to these pages and content. To optimize website structure and navigation, you need to have descriptive URLs with relevant keywords, logically structured and easy-to-follow navigation menu, and use internal links that lead to your own content and pages. All these will help you create a user-friendly site hierarchy, which in turn improves the way search engines crawl your site and its visibility in search engines results pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Keywords are what users put in search engines to find what they\u2019re looking for, and at the same time keywords tell search engines what your website is all about<\/a>. That\u2019s why it\u2019s important to use words wisely. Create clear and concise content that corresponds to what users search for and expect to see on your site. Research and use keywords that your audience looks for in order to match their search intent. Use synonyms and variations as well, in order to cover a wider range of their searches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/span>4 Ways To Make Your Website Greener<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Choose a Green Hosting Provider<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Improve SEO Visibility<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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