In part one of this article we looked at two major factors that contribute to writing a bad article: a failure to consider the purpose of the article, and failing to keep on topic. Here are some of the more specific faults that qualify an article to be termed 'bad'.

SPELLING ERRORS
Spelling errors are inexcusable since spell checkers are available to everybody. If you cannot be bothered to use your spell checker, why should I bother to read your article? Poor use of homonyms is a different matter, but even so, anyone intending to write articles for submission to directories should take time to learn the difference between such common bloomers as 'there' and 'their' or 'lose' and 'loose'. There are plenty of internet references to these mistakes, so look them up and do not make them!

GRAMMATICAL ERRORS
Simple grammatical errors such as 'I done it', rather than 'I did it', indicate that you might be better off employing a ghostwriter to write your article. If you do not have a good command of English grammar, you will have problems writing acceptable articles. You may get by if you ask someone to check your work for you, but if you get repeated rejections of your article you should probably pay someone to write for you. It will still be profitable and you will avoid putting people off visiting your website.

Incidentally, while on this subject, although the term 'grammatical errors' is commonly used it is, in fact, ungrammatical! A piece of text can be grammatical or ungrammatical. If it is grammatical it has no errors, so term 'errors in grammar' would be more correct.

PLAGIARISM & COPYRIGHT VIOLATION
Whatever you do, do not present another author's work as being your own. Not only is this illegal, it is complete laziness, and once discovered your internet business is dead. At the very least, you will have to start again with a new domain and possibly a change of email address. It is simply not worth it, and you will be found out by anyone who carries out a duplicate content check. This is a common test these days when duplicate content could make your site invisible on the search engines.

If you copy an article from an article directory, you must not change the content and you must include the author's 'resource box' or bio.

PRIVATE LABEL ARTICLES
Using private label articles is not as bad as plagiarising, but can also lead to the web page you use the article on as being duplicate content. You will also likely be one of many who are trying to submit the same article to the directories, and have a good chance of being rejected. The same is true of articles purchased from the internet. These will be offered to anyone willing to pay for them, and the only way to get value from such work is to rewrite them before using them.

Most ghostwriters will rewrite articles for you to avoid duplicate content if you do not want to do it yourself. Avoiding duplication is a skilled job, and you are ultimately probably quicker and cheaper writing the article from scratch, rather than buying one then rewriting it. Much of the content offered for sale on the internet is generated using content generation software, and would need to be comprehensively rewritten to be of use on a webpage. Avoid this by simply paying for fresh articles rather than buying old ones.

USE OF THE RESOURCE BOX
Some so-called authors fail to identify themselves in their resource box. Whatever the reason for this is, it is self-defeating, and generally done for nefarious reasons. You should provide your name or a pseudonym registered with the directory promoting your article. You should also provide a URL in the resource box that is relevant to the topic of the article. If the directory allows you to use html, use a text link that directs the reader to a specific page in your website that provides them with further information on the topic of your article.

A back link to a page within your website is more valuable than one to your home page. In the words of Michael Caine, "not a lot of people know that!"

For example, if you are writing about article rewriting techniques, your resource box could read: "click to learn more about Rewriting Articles", and link the last two words to your webpage on rewriting articles. The text link should be boldened, colored blue and underlined. Everybody will then recognize it as being a link. Anybody copying your article will provide you with a link back to a page within your site rather than the home page, and Google will associate the text string 'rewriting articles' with your URL.

If you can avoid most of the above common faults, you will do your website a lot of good, and give it a good kick on its way up the rankings. If you fail to avoid them, your site will be climbing up a greasy pole.