What is Original Content?
You may have noticed during the article submission process that many article directories require that you submit only original content. Does this mean you have to submit a different article to each one of them? Or could it mean something else?
With all the hype about the duplicate content issue, it's easy to see how people can get confused and feel a bit paranoid about what this means. But the answer is quite simple.
Just to reiterate what Google calls duplicate content, they refer to single sites that use the same text over and over to fool the index bots into thinking the site is "ultra relevant." It has nothing whatsoever with having the same content spewed out all over the web.
This is a good thing too, because there's no way anyone could prevent getting penalized if this was the case. Once you have content on the web, anyone can grab it and post it on their site to add relevancy and volume. The very nature of an article directory is designed to offer people the opportunity to find relevant content for their sites as long as they leave a link back to the point of origin. Plus there are site scrapers that grab content every minute of every day for posting on other sites.
So if duplicate content meant one instance of every bit of content on the Internet, we'd all be in serious trouble!
Now with that out of the way, what do the article directories mean by "original content?"
Simply put, it means they only want you to submit articles that come from you, the originator. It doesn't mean you can't post your own original article to more than one directory. It just means you can't post someone else's article that you got from another site.
The only exception to this rule is if you have authorization from the author to post an article that hasn't been submitted to a particular article directory before. But still, the article is original because the author has assigned you the task of submitting for them, or has given you the article to do as you see fit.
That's all it means!
So don't worry about submitting the same article to many, or even all the article directories as long as the article is yours, or you have permission to use it. Just don't take someone else's article submission and try to submit it again, and you'll be fine.