8 June 2 Critical Updates for Your Website Before December 2020 June 8, 2020By Will Strohl | 2 MIN READ There are always updates throughout the internet that impact your website. Keeping up with them can seem downright impossible for most - even if you're in the industry. There are two major updates this year that you need to be highly aware of though. If you don't adjust accordingly, the availability and discovery of your website could be drastically impacted. Adobe Flash is Going Bye-Bye Adobe Flash was once the go-to technology for delivering content-rich and highly interactive website content. It made animated objects and cross-browser compatibility for these kinds of user-interactions available like never before. These days, Flash has been used for other types of user-interaction. It's a common method used for file uploads, copy-to-clipboard functionality, and video playback (still). Since Flash's heyday, two things have happened. HTML5 has become quite awesome, and Flash has been riddled with security issues over the years. As a result, Adobe and all major web browsers are ending support for Flash this year. Adobe (Flash), Microsoft Edge, Mozilla FireFox, and Google Chrome, all have issued similar announcements. Flash support will end on or before December 20, 2020. If you're unsure whether your website is impacted, there are several ways to check to see if you are potentially impacted. If you have direct access to the files in your website, simply search the folder of your website using your favorite file search tool, such as FileLocator Lite (or Pro). Search the folder for any instances of *.swf. If you don't have direct access to your website, I'd suggest talking to your website administrator. However, there is a tool you can use to scan your website. SEO Site Checkup has a Flash Test scanner. It may not be 100% accurate, but it can help you check your website. Google's Page Experience SEO Update Any website that hasn't been usable on desktop or mobile devices has already been organically dinged by SEO practices over the years. Only this was done simply by website visitors not linking to, using, otherwise referring, or using it in any way. In short, if your website doesn't look good and load well on both desktop and mobile web browsers, people didn't use you and therefore, your search ranking was automatically adversely impacted. Google has recently announced their plans to make this an official part of their search results ranking algorithm. Starting at the end of the year, if your website is not catering to providing a usable and engaging experience across all devices, your website will see itself drop from the search results. If you have plans to update your website already, you may want to accelerate those plans. If you don't, you may want to have your website administration team review everything again soon. Ideally, you'll want to have any updates tested and in place by October. This includes any updates for page load performance, design updates, mobile-specific updates, as well as SEO tasks to update the meta data across the pages on your website (page title, description, canonical URLs, sitemap priorities, etc.). Let's Chat! We'd love to work with you. Let's talk about how. Contact Us June 8, 2020By Will Strohl Business, Internet, Website Google, Marketing, Mobile, Security, SEO, Web Browsers About the Author Will Strohl Founder & CEO Upendo Ventures Overall, Will has nearly 20 years of experience helping website owners become more successful in all areas, including mentoring, website development, marketing, strategy, e-commerce, and more. Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. blog comments powered by Disqus Related Posts Is Your Website Helping or Hurting Your Reputation? Your website is your digital storefront. Are people walking in—or walking away? 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