Is there a negative consequence of recycling guest posts?

[deweydecibel]

I have an SEO campaign, where I have about ~100 target websites.  I have an article on a specific topic, that is relevant to their industry and mine.  The article links back to my website, and in exchange for posting the article the owner of the target website receives compensation in free services from our company. The topic is very specific to the marketing campaign and the compensation model.  It is not possible for this particular campaign to create other topics for articles.

If several websites host the exact same article that links to my website:

1. Is there a negative SEO consequence for the target websites?
2. Is there a negative SEO consequence for my website?
3. If yes to either of these questions, just how different would the post need to be to avoid the answer being yes to either of these questions?

[KeriMorgret]

I see multiple potential problems here.

1. This could be seen as a paid link.
2. Search engines are not fond of duplicate content, so are likely to show a result from just one of the sites.
3. The effort to make the content original enough for these different sites may be more trouble than it is worth. Quality sites likely will not be interested in posting content that is spun just enough for it to pass a Copyscape test.

[deweydecibel]

Hi Keri,

I think I haven't explained this very well.

The target websites are small local businesses that do not have many pages.  They are certainly not what i would call "Quality Sites", but this term is arbitrary anyway.  This campaign is specifically designed for local SEO to get links and citations for other local businesses in a related industry.  The campaign offers a free service from my business to the target websites customers.  The post explains what the service is, and links to a special form on our website so that they can register for this service.  I think you are interpreting this as being far more nefarious than it really is.

[EGOL]

I would not call it nefarious.  I would simply call it duplicate content that Google will not be pleased with.  Google can see lazy efforts to get links - and you are giving a reward to people who accommodate you.   It's duplicate content.  Google will likely ignore most of it.  If you do this at scale don't be surprised if none of these links are counted.