using other peoples articles on my site

Up to this point every article on my site was written by me. Is there any benefit to putting articles by other people on my site. Do I need to provide them a link to authors sites if I use there articles. If so does that decrease the value of the page as far as ranking, link, building and traffic goes.

 

Google can punish you for using duplicate content, yes. The general policy is that you have to provide a link to the author's site if they are allowing you to use a specific piece of content. People stealing other's content is a huge problem. Read this article about dealing with people who steal content:

http://www.johncow.com/how-to-deal-with-people-who-are-stealing-your-content/

 

Hi alwayslearning,
You can use someone's article as long as you provide a link back to where you got it and include any resource boxes/links that are part of the article. If you get your article from EzineArticles, GoArticles, etc. they'll provide a "publisher" button that allows you to copy and paste everything, including links and a link back, so you don't have to worry about leaving something out. If you're talking about taking the article off of "any old site" you should contact the webmaster first, as they may not want their content published on other sites.

 

Can we change the article from ezinearticles to aviod duplicated content issue? Will it violate the original article copyright?