Jill Kurtz, Owner, Kurtz Digital StrategyA great way to consistently publish great content that boosts your SEO and affirms your expertise is to have a blog. Each blog post is an opportunity to provide value to your target audience, drive traffic to your website, and to share your expertise.To make sure your blog is effective, it is important to avoid some common pitfalls.Mistake 1: Committing to writing more frequently than you can.Many people think having a blog means you need to post daily. That's not true.To be successful, you do need to blog regularly. Determining what the best definition is of "regularly" for you and your target audience is something you need to think through. Research to determine your target audience's expectation. Also do a realistic assessment of the time you need to research and write posts. Find the best intersection between audience needs and your resources. Don't over-commit.Mistake 2: Creating content silos.It's easy to thunk of each blog post as content that stands on its own. Yes, but no.Each blog post should stand alone in that the content needs to be interesting and informative on its own. However, each post should also be interconnected to a larger context. Be sure to link to related and relevant content, whether it is on your blog, on your website, or available from another source.The more that each piece of your content fits into a larger context of information online, the more visible it will be to search engines and the more helpful it will be for your audience.Mistake 3: Thinking one and done.The web is a crowded place. Chances are that when you publish your content it won't be seen right away.Help people to find your content. Reference your content everywhere that you publish online. Publish a post. Tweet about it. Post to Facebook about it. Post to LinkedIn. You get the idea.Mistake 4: Focusing on the words alone.Your goal is to establish your expertise and use the right words so that you can be found in searches, so it's not surprising to think only about the words. That's a mistake. How your writing looks has a big impact on whether it will get read.Having the right words is essential, but increase the change they will be read by also paying attention to these things:

• Images that attract attention
• Format with subheads, bullets, and other formatting techniques to break up the wall of text
• Blog template that is visually appealing