Here are my thoughts and questions at the same time on submitting one article to many directories. I know that it would be treated like duplicate content BUT. Let's assume that if i send one article to single directory, then my embeded link will have "strength" = 100 (for the sake of example), because article is unique and so on. Then i submit the same article to 100 other directories Google will mark it as duplicate content and devalue "strength" of every link to 1 (remeber the example thing). Now what about the first link? Is it also treated as duplicate content? It should be rather marked as duplicatED content right? And finally what about "strength" of link from first article directory? Is it also devalued to 1?
Sometimes, even the oldest article can be sent to supplemental results, or find itself on page 200 for keywords if other sources for the article are more authoritative. Write an SEO article, post it on your page today, wait till it's indexed, then post it in a thread here on DP, and make an entry on WIKI...then see what happens to your original work. However, I'd assume that all three could very well count as individual inbound links. Though, as each of my three examples has VERY different ways of presenting the article you may find that I'm completely wrong ~ I've seen articles supporting both sides of the story. ___________ I really suggest writing ONE fantastic article to be hosted on your own page, then two or three supplemental articles to be submitted to various directories. That should help you all the way around.
For duplicate content penalty the first page to be indexed by google is treated as the original. No matter how many copies there are out there the value of the first article submitted will not change. However, all the articles after that will automatically be designated a PR0. I have had the same problem. Articles are mainly for traffic and provide minimal SEO. But, if you link to your first article with wisely chosen anchor text you can make it move up to the top of the ezinearticle search engine (google) since most all the articles listed there don't have PR. So it moves to the top of the in-site search and it gets distributed way more.
So tell me now, why would you just want to submit your article to one reprint article directory. It doesn't make sense as these article directories are here so other publishers can reprint them for their own sites making them duplicate anyway from just the one directory. I just go for all the directories and hope for my article to get on a site that gets good traffic for me.
in fact , there is no duplicate content penalty for google and it's a big and big problem for internet