Guest blogging and duplicate content

[SEODinosaur]

I have a guest blog prepared and several sites I can submit it to, would it be considered duplicate content if I submitted one guest blog post to multipul blogs? and if so this content is not on my site but is linking to it. What will google do?

Lets say 5 blogs except the same content and post it up, I understand that the first blog to have it up will not be punished, what about the rest of the blogs? can they get punished for this duplicate content? can I get punished for having duplicate content linking to me?

[Catalyste]

It would not officially penalize you, but it won't help you either...

You're content would fight one against each other, so you should put a rel Canonical, stating this one is the source. This will tell google which one is the source but this would take sometime and won't give you the same benefit has 5 content. Also the Panda updates are in some measure looking at devaluating  poor quality duplicate content ( The one not compensated by Huge linking as for a Newpaper site).

In my opinion, maybe you won't get "punished" but you won't help yourself either... Better to do 2 Unique content then 5 not unique.

[SteveGerencser]

No, there will be no punishment from the search engines. However, there will be punishment from the form of quality websites no longer publishing your content.

Everyone wants unique content. By offering your article/post to multiple people you devalue it for the people that run it. Do it enough times and you will be left submitting your content to 2nd or 3rd tier sites that have far less value for you.

[DanielFreedman]

If practical, a better approach is to write different articles on the same topic for different sites.

I know of one subject matter expert who does this to great effect.

[AlanMosley]

You will not get punished, but only one version will rank for the content. so its not going to do you much good having a link on the other pages that will not have any authority.

If you want a link back to your site, you want that link on the original that has authority to pass to you.