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How to Measure SEO Sustainability Ellie Connor iCrossing speakerdeck.com/econn1 linkedin.com/in/ellie-connor/

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We don't need to recap why we need sustainability

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Climate change is overwhelming, and it’s easy to feel we can’t do anything

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SEO plays a role in the fight against climate change 3.5% AVIATION INDUSTRY

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SEO plays a role in the fight against climate change 3.7% INTERNET & COMMUNICATIONS

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iCrossing UK How Many of You Have Considered Sustainability in Your SEO Strategy? Poll Time • Client Name • 10.03.2022 • Project Name

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The global carbon footprint of Google search is the equivalent of 7 return trips to the moon per day

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It is our duty to take action now With the rise of AI, internet carbon emissions will double by 2030

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We can’t stop our reliance on the internet , but we can reduce how much energy is spent on search Reducing energy needed to load a page Reducing users’ number of page loads Making bot crawls easier

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How to Measure SEO Sustainability

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Spoiler: We’re SEO Specialists, Not Environmental Experts

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We know that reducing energy usage reduces water waste and carbon emissions Energy usage Water Waste Carbon Emissions

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Metrics That Reflect Lower Energy Consumption • Page Speed • CWV • Server Load Time • CDN Time • SSR Presence • Text to Code Ratio • Page Size

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Metrics That Reflect Lower Energy Consumption • Low time spent on page + high conversion for PLPs • Low Bounce Rate • Crawl Depth < 3 Less Page Loads

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Metrics That Reflect Lower Energy Consumption • Optimised IA • All 200 indexable URLs in sitemap • No 4xx/5xx errors • No 3xx redirect chains

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Look Familiar?

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A Good SEO Strategy is a Sustainable Strategy A good user journey is naturally a more sustainable one, which is SEO’s bread and butter

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However, metrics around CO2 Emissions and Water Wastage Speak More to Us

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If we calculate energy usage per web page load, we can (roughly) calculate CO2 and water usage CO2

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To calculate energy, we need to look at the journey of a web page load Total energy = server energy + data centre energy

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A server request uses roughly 0.00015 kWh for a 1 second page load

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A Data Centre requires 1.8 x more energy than the servers it houses

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Total energy = 0.0004 kWh for 1 second page load

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CO2 For every 1 second of page load 0.0004kWh 0.5kg/kWh 0.2g CO2 Measuring carbon footprint =

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If your homepage has a 2.5s page load speed and 10,000 visits a month…

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For every 1 second of page load 0.0004 kWh 3L/kWH 1.2 ML Measuring water footprint =

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If your homepage has a 2.5s page load speed and 10,000 visits a month…

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Combining the Metrics

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We’ve created an SEO Sustainability Calculator to make audits easier

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How It Works:

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How It Works:

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How It Works:

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Next Steps Identify key sustainability gains Calculate website sustainability Fix energy inefficiencies Repeat!

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Good News It’s not too late for us to combat climate change together

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Got Questions? Email us at [email protected]

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iCrossing UK 30 Panton St, London SW1Y 4AJ Thank you