I've seen it go back and forth in other posts on the forum...for a new site that is trying to generate interest/backlinks to my site, do I initially put the article on my site or submit it to a article submission?
Yeah, rewrite your article several times so you can post it on several sites, like Ezinarticles, GoArticles and other Web 2.0 sites like hubpages and squidoo. Just make sure each article rewrite is unique.
So your saying I can't post the exact same article to say Ezinarticles, Goarticles, and Digg? What about slight variations aka a different paragraph here and there
google uses duplicate content filter and filters out the duplicate content pages by keeping one original page indexed. so there is no benefit in submitting the same article to multiple sites. but if you can tweak that a little, change the title a little and tweak the article around a little, that will work better. or you can use an article spinner to spin the articles for multiple variations and then submit to article directories
After getting indexed of the article in your site, try to re-phrase it , change some words to make it different from the other one Then you can safely submit it to different high pr sites to generate links and traffic pointing to your main site.
If you don't want to rewrite your articles, just make sure that it gets indexed on your site before you submit to directories. I usually wait a week or two before I submit articles from my site to article directories and I only submit to the top 5 - that way I know there won't be any duplicate content spam going on with my articles. The duplicate content thing is a myth. as long as you submit your articles to decent directories you'll be okay. Instead of rewriting articles, just write more - the backlinks are worth more than the unique content.
or you can use article spinning software to create multiple copies of your own content. Though its quite hard to find a software intelligent as the human brain but I think there are many software available on Digital point and online.
In the long run it's a better idea to have the articles on your own established site. This way you have more control, you could change banners, affiliate links, etc. If your site is brand new and you need targeted traffic - submit to ezine, etc.
If you have relevant articles with good content worth reading, posting it on your own site might be worthwhile. If you develop a following, they will be motivated to frequent your site and probably pass on the word.
Use rewrite tools or online services to make a several rewrited copys. Original article may be longer than rewrited text. You have to post them after indexing original article on your site, because article directories indexing is very quickly (many updates, many googlebots) and SE can take your original article as a copy!
I've come to believe that you don't actually need to rewrite your articles. I've done rewriting of articles for some websites and not for others, and they always end up the same as far as SEO goes. This is just my experience though, and if you have the time, it's obviously better to do a rewrite.