I am planning on writing a few articles that will be put up on my website as well. I was just wondering, is it ok if i write the articles have them submitted to a few hundred article directories and then later on add the articles to my website, or should I add them to my website first and then submit them to article directories? which way would give maximum benefit?
From my understanding, if you are going to submit your content to multiple sites, it should always get indexed first on your site. So you should probably upload it on your site a couple days before you upload it anywhere else. Unique content is always better than duplicate content, for link building and for content on your site. But if you are going to use duplicate content, you want the article on your site to be labeled as the original.
If the articles are top class ones, setting them up on your website first will be more beneficial, than giving them off to 100s of article directories.
Don't submit any of your content to article directories that is a SUPER bad idea, those pages on your site will not rank in search results because of duplicate content. Also if you submit the same article to 100s of directories it's a complete waste of time, you wont get any link juice from more than a couple. You have to rewrite them for each directory so they are unique. Pick a bunch of the best directories (high PR & dofollow resource box) and rewrite for them only - quality over quantity!