With the wonders that online marketing can do to a simple business, everyone is eager to find out more about the different techniques and strategies that will help them promote their products and services online more effectively.
One common trend that online marketers all over the world have adapted is to use blogs as a form of a search engine optimization tool.
Today, having a blog is no longer uncommon - anyone can practically create his or her own blog in minutes and can readily write anything and everything that comes to mind and publish it online for the world to see.
However using a blog for search engine optimization purposes is an entirely different thing: blogging to promote certain websites or to advertise certain products and services online entails a lot of work and thinking.
Merely creating a blog will not be enough if you plan on making a business blog to be a part of your online marketing plan.
If you wish to take advantage of the benefits that blogging can provide, you better do your homework and find out how much good (and bad) blogging can bring you.
Because blogging is free and highly powerful to some extent, it is often considered as a very effective search engine optimization tool by most online marketers in different countries.
But just like article marketing and paid advertising, there are two sides to the coin - blogging also has its share of drawbacks and disadvantages.
Pros:

• Blogs yield immediate results

Because blogs are very simple to understand in terms of layout and design, readers find it easy to check content found on blogs.
Aside from that, when a certain entry is published in a blog, others who have subscribed to your blog will get instant access to that entry hence giving an instant flow of visitors without doing anything complicated.

• Blogs provide long term links

The great thing about blogs is that once it goes live, it remains live as long as the internet exists.
So if you have links embedded all over your blog, you are guaranteed to have a lifetime source of links for your website.

• Blogs are very affordable/free

Compared to setting up your own website, using a blog to promote your business online is a very affordable alternative.
Some blogs even offer their online space for free! Cons:

• Short term benefits

Once your needs grow beyond what a blog can offer, you can easily outgrow its short term benefits and proceed to creating your own website eventually.

• Minimal Content

Blogs are only good if you have a number of posts.
But if you are talking about very large amounts of content, like hundreds and thousands of pages for example, blogs will not hold.