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Security is Job #1. You only need to read the business headlines to understand that the internet is a dangerous place. But the problem with headlines is that hacking, phishing, and ransomware attacks only make the news when there are millions of identity victims or a big billion-dollar company has been the target. This gives a lot of people the impression that hackers don’t attack Small to Medium-sized Businesses (SMBs). The truth is that small businesses are attacked far more frequently than large ones and the consequences are severe. Here's why.

SEO is no longer a separate task relegated to marketing. Thanks to Google algorithm updates, SEO is inextricably linked to solid website security and code quality. In short, “What’s good for the user is good for SEO,” and that means that now everything is SEO.

In May of 2020 Google updated their Google Page Speed Insight tools with new measurements of speed and experience as part of their official recommendations. Then in December, they announced that those metrics would contribute to Search ranking scores. This makes Google Core Web Vitals mission-critical for all business websites. Here is what you need to know.

Is Mobile-First Development & Design a Good Thing? The short answer is an unequivocal “yes.” But the longer answer — the right answer — is a bit more complicated than that. Each business is unique and that means the preferred behavior of the target audiences of each business should determine where IT resources are deployed. If your answer is “mobile-first” because that’s what everyone is saying at the moment, it’s time to go back to the analytics and find out what your customers want to do.

A few months ago, we published an article on page speed: “The Truth About Website Page Speed” (link below). In that article, we decry the rise of automated website speed scoring tools to reflect on the parts of page sped that matter. A part of page speed that matters is clean code. The usability of a site is enough to warrant a serious look into how the cleanliness your code is impacting the user experience. But there’s more … a lot more, and it is mission-critical stuff. There are three ways in which the cleanliness of your website code matters: 1. User Experience (previously covered here) 2. Security Risks (this article) 3. Google Dominance in Search and Browsers (covered next)

The End of the year always brings a flurry of retrospective content. That’s natural I suppose. It is natural to get a bit reflective when the calendar markers click over. The compulsion to arm-chair quarterback major events and mistakes or to don a wizardly hat and Nostradamus the future is strong. We’ve looked back at dozens of technology stories from this year and found that ALL the big stories and events actually boil down to just 4 deeper, more meaningful stories. Let’s take a look and bring the year into focus.