Ecograder, an automatic website grading tool focused on sustainability, checks for search engine optimization. Why? Because a website that can be found easily and quickly uses fewer resources than one requiring more energy to track down.
We could quibble. For one thing, a website that is not optimized and not findable probably gets fewer visits than a well-optimized site which gets lots of visits. You might argue that a website that’s hard to find actually uses far fewer resources.
For another, findability is based on the Moz findability score, which is all about links. Links are super important for SEO, but content and user experience are also important.
However, Ecograder has, over the course of five years, analyzed just about 1.7 million web pages. There’s a point at which the sample size smooths out any quibbles. They’ve passed that point. Especially when you see the average score.
Average SEO score: 1.25 out of 10
“A score of 1.25 out of 10 in this category tells us that SEO is not a priority for most website owners, even though it offer significant ways to improve your business and marketing goals while also reducing the energy needed to find content,” Ecograder’s parent company says.
We checked out the websites we manage with Ecograder, and none of ours had anywhere near that low a score, so we felt pretty cheerful about that.
But the 1.25 score is the average. Of 1.7 million websites, including higher scoring sites like ours and very high scoring sites like PBS.org with a findability score of 8 and Amazon, with a findability score of 7.6, the average is 1.25. That means that a very large number of websites are essentially unfindable.
Or, as the Ecograder folks put it, they are not making SEO a priority.
And yet, being findable is absolutely essential for a successful online presence. No matter how awesome your website may be, if the people you want to talk to can't find it, it's worthless. Click To Tweet
If you’re that average web site owner, you should certainly mend your ways. Note that so few web owners are making SEO a priority that doing so can lift you right out of the pack. Contact us if you’d like to make your website findable.
The rest of the Ecograde
Ecograder has a serious purpose.
“With the internet’s carbon emissions pushing one billion tons annually and its environmental impact larger than that of the airline industry,” the makers say, “it is important now more than ever that we create planet-friendly digital products and services powered by renewable energy.”
Getting green hosting is the top thing you can do to improve your website’s sustainability score. We work with WPEngine, which purchases renewable energy credits. Click through the link to upgrade to greener hosting.
Check out the infographic below to see how the average website stacks up.
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