Google Duplicate Content Penalty

Actually, it is ideal. The copy of the article on your own site would remain in the primary index, while the syndicated copies would be the ones banished to the supplemental index.

Thus, you would not be losing your search engine traffic to the article directory, where most of your traffic will be distracted by ads and other articles (or just hit the back button). Instead, you still get the benefit of potential syndication of your article from the directory.

If you send your article to other sites that have authority status and are topically related to your site, you also get the benefit of a context relevant backlink, even though that copy of the article may be in the supplemental index.

There is such a thing as "duplicate content". It's multiple copies of the same text-file within one domain.

As Google explains on their WebMaster Central Blog (and in many other places), they don't penalize sites for duplicate content. (This interesting little article by article marketer and SEO expert Anne Pottinger contains a quotation from Google on that very point: Article Marketers – Lay the Duplicate Content Myth To Rest Once and For All - Internet Marketing and Publishing ).

No, not at all!

No, not at all!

An ever-increasing number of us here, who are making our livings from article marketing, do exactly that. Your blog will not be penalized for it. That's syndicated content. It isn't "duplicate content".

Google goes to huge lengths to clarify this.

As you can see from all the posts like this: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5273419

It is ideal. Backlinks from content in the supplemental index aren't worth any less than backlinks in the main index. Posts like this clarify the point: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5867601

If it helps/interests you, Maddy, this post describes how my entire business (and actually those of many others article marketers here, very similarly) is built: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5035794

However, having said all that, although there certainly won't be any "penalty" for submitting the identical article to multiple article directories, the reality is that there won't be much benefit, either. Article directories are just not good enough, because their own backlinks are pretty useless (they're non-context-relevant, PR-0 backlinks) and you certainly wouldn't want to be trying to use them for their own traffic, for all the reasons explained in this post.

An article directory is simply a stepping stone. Article marketers submit to an article directory as a way of getting from there to relevant sites whose traffic (and perhaps backlinks) we do want. Not for the directory's traffic and backlinks.

"Ezine Articles" is the one to use, in my opinion, because when ezine publishers and webmasters want content in their niche (which many do, all the time) that's usually their first port of call. So it's the best place to make your articles available. And of course that's why article directories exist. All explained here: How do Article Directories work?