It is no secret that Google is cleaning the deck with spam in general. A large pert of this cleanup has affected webmasters in a big way. Content duplication is on the chopping block and it's not just what's on your sites that is being looked at.
If you catch the breeze from article marketing websites and google's content duplication penalty you'll start to understand it from the search engine engineers perspective. Here's a few of the biggest article marketing websites:
www.websitemarketingplan.com
www.article-submissions
www.myarticlezine.com
www.articlesubmission.net
www.articlepr.com
www.article-hut.com
www.articleblotter.com
www.submityourarticle.com
ezinearticles.com/
www.articlewheel.com
www.e-articles.info
These are all large high volume reliable sources for you to submit your articles with or without duplication. They are going to eventually send your website a ton of traffic right? The answer is a 2 pronged answer, Possibly yes if your article submitted is not also found elsewhere on the internet. The more copies that are found the less weight the search engine puts on its ranking value. At some point, the article may trigger a penalty if it exceeds the threshold in place. So we can assume then if we always submit unique article to directories we'll get traffic to our website, right? In theory, right. Unless the search gods decide to impose a penalty on all article marketing websites that contain content duplication. The more content duplication the higher the penalty.
Now there is also the concern of the links you receive from the article directory containing your content duplication. I am pretty sure that there are provisions made in algorithmic programming to combat this. On the other hand I am certain there a merit points given to reliable, trustworthy expert writers. I believe if you looked at the data and statics that Google uses to would be shocked. I speak mainly of how they determine how to trust and who to trust. An interesting point is they have recently changed the trust algo to favored sites. Or at least there has been some clever integration where "favored" is used to describe the algo. I wrote about my feelings on a Google using trust and no trust to classify sites and it seemed to be headed for a PR blunder. If you were an honest, new webmaster and your site wasn't on the 'trusted' listed then that mut mean you're not trusted!
By taking the time to create your own articles or pay for a professional copywriting it is an investment in the future of your business. It will likely avoid a content duplication penalties and you'll be able to sleep better at night. If you think you are suffering from a content duplication penalty then rewrite your copy that's on your site. Unfortunately your articles may not be so easy to fix, especially if they have been reprinted 1000's of times. This is beyond your control and I thinks penalties in these cases would be unfair.
It's up to you if you want to believe if there is a content duplication penalty or not. It is something only you can sort out when it comes to hitting the "Submit Article" button. If you want to submit your articles to the biggest article directories just follow the links above. On the other hand if you want to become recognized and seen as an expert author CreateOnlineBusiness.com is a choice you will not regret making