I was wondering if it is best to have your fresh articles indexed on your own site before submitting to the article directories? But if you do that maybe less likely some directories will accept articles? I was just thinking best to use this good content for yourself first and get credit from the SE's for the original, then send to directories with your links in the credits.
Make two copies of the article. Small changes here and there. Keep the better version on your site and submit the second version to article directories. Bingo, no duplicate content. - Matt
Don't submit the same articles on article directories which you are publishing on your site cause google might mark the content on your site as duplicate content.
Yea, that is what happened to one of my articles a couple of days ago. I posted an article on my blog and submitted that same article to ezinearticles. My blog got indexed first and the article appeared in #9 position out of 55MIL searches. Then a couple of days later ezinearticle page was indexed.... my blog's page is nowhere to be found in google index as a result... But writing two articles (one for a blog and the second for article directory) is a bit too much work, don't you think?
I use to put my articles on my blog first and after indexing the articles on my blog that's the time I'm gonna submit the copy of articles from my blog. Article directories will approved your articles as long as it's useful and interesting. But as an SEO I don't recommend to submit an article to article directories unless it is quality directories. As from observation article from article directories doesn't really boost traffic. If you really want to boost traffic submit your blog with your article to social bookmarking. This is much worth than submitting article to thousand of article directories.
I think writing two versions of the article is more sound than posting the same article on the article directory.