Article submission sites in 2026: 115 that still work

Article submission sites are platforms where you publish an article under your own name, with a link back to your website. In September 2026, our team opened 438 of them one by one, and 115 still accept new articles.

Which ones still have readers, and what kind of link do they actually give you?

In this guide, you’ll learn:

• which free article submission sites still publish new articles, sorted by how you get published
• which famous article directories have closed, gone offline or changed business
• what we measured on real posts: dofollow, nofollow, ugc or redirect links
• how to submit an article without triggering Google’s link spam policies

How we checked each article submission site

Most lists of article submission sites, also called blog submission sites or article posting sites, are copied from older lists, so they keep platforms that shut down years ago. On September 30, 2026, the SEO Montreal team opened every platform below, read its help pages and submission guidelines, then, when the site let us in, looked at a recent post published by a real user.

On that post, we read the rel attribute of the backlinks in the body and, when visible, in the author bio. We did not create accounts or submit anything, so the results describe what a logged-out visitor sees on a public page. Link policies change, so check a recent post yourself before you submit an article.

The article submission sites still open in 2026

These 115 platforms were open to new content on the day we checked, some only by application or on a paid plan. They are grouped by how an article gets published: on a free blog, on a site you build, in a newsletter, after an editorial review, on a developer or research platform, as a document, inside a community, on a profile, as a press release, or on a paid or limited plan. You will not find Domain Authority (DA) or Page Authority (PA) scores here: they are Moz metrics that drift from month to month, Google does not use them, and a high DA says nothing about whether anyone will read your article. Free blogs on these platforms are sometimes called web 2.0 sites; we kept the ones that still have readers.

Free blogging platforms with instant publishing

With a free account, you can publish an article on these free article submission sites the same day. That makes them the closest thing to “instant approval” that still has real readers.

Two of these free blogging platforms set rules worth reading before you publish an article. Bear Blog’s code of conduct says “Don’t publish spam or marketing material,” and Dreamwidth’s sign-up page says using an account for backlink building or search engine optimization violates its terms.

Free website builders and site hosts

Here, you build a small site on a free subdomain and publish your articles on it, which is what many lists call web 2.0 sites. You control the backlinks, so the question is less dofollow or nofollow than whether anyone will ever visit.

On github.com itself, README and profile links are nofollow, and GitHub’s documentation says Pages is not meant to host an online business. A Notion page only reaches Google once its owner switches on search engine indexing, and Notion says that can take up to four weeks.

Newsletter platforms with a web archive

Every issue you send also becomes a public web page with its own backlinks. These free article submission sites suit a business that already writes to its audience and wants each issue to live on the web.

Article sites with editorial review

Here, an editor or a review team checks the article or the author before anything goes live. The wait is longer, but the audience is more focused and the platforms enforce their own guidelines on links.

Read the submission guidelines before you pitch. HackerNoon allows one brand link per 500 words, the DZone article submission guidelines reject promotional intent and excessive backlinks, Smashing Magazine turns down marketing pieces and listicles, and SooperArticles asks for at least 850 words and bans AI-written content.

Developer and data platforms

Developer communities read tutorials, notebooks and answers rather than promotional articles, and most mark backlinks nofollow or ugc. A useful answer or notebook here reaches a technical audience that rarely clicks on ads.

Document, slide and flipbook sites

These sites host PDFs and decks rather than web articles. They suit a guide, a checklist or a study you already have, and they reach readers who search inside the platform.

On Calameo, FlipHTML5 and Yumpu, clickable links inside a PDF are a paid feature, so a free upload gives you visibility inside the platform and nothing more.

Research and academic repositories

These repositories accept research, not marketing. They fit a business that publishes real studies, datasets or white papers, and they remove content outside their scope, so they are no place to submit an article written for link building.

Community, Q&A and social platforms

On these sites, the value is the audience already there. Quora answers and Spaces, for example, reach readers in a niche at the moment they ask a question.

The BiggerPockets result is a good example of why we measure. Both member blog posts we checked, including an Editor’s Pick, carry a noindex, nofollow tag on the whole page, so their author links have no search value.

Portfolio, profile and curation sites

These platforms host a profile, a portfolio or a collection rather than a full article. Each one gives your brand a page of its own, usually with a single link to your website, and most of those links are nofollow.

Press release sites

A press release site publishes company news rather than articles. Every one we checked marked its links nofollow or hid them behind a redirect, and Google’s spam policies name press releases with optimized anchor text as link spam.

Paid, limited or spam-heavy options

These last 15 article posting sites still work, with a catch: a fee, a narrow scope or a spam problem. Paying does not guarantee a dofollow link either, since Forbes Councils marks its links nofollow.

We list Telegraph and JustPaste.it so you recognize the names, and we do not recommend them.

Article directories that closed or changed

Many article directories that most lists still put at the top no longer take articles. The model lost ground after Google’s February 2011 algorithm change, later known as the Panda update, which aimed to reduce rankings for sites that “copy content from other websites.” Here is what we found when we opened each article directory and the other platforms that closed, changed or could not be verified.

HubPages is the biggest change. Staff posted an announcement on the future of HubPages stating that new content, edits and new accounts had stopped, and the Earnings Program ended in January 2026. EzineArticles and GoArticles might come back after an outage, since both domains are still registered, but neither accepted articles on the day we checked.

Dofollow vs nofollow on article submission sites

A dofollow link is simply a link without a nofollow, ugc or sponsored value in its rel attribute. On the 115 open platforms, we found all three patterns: followed links on Substack, DEV Community, freeCodeCamp News, Smashing Magazine, Zenodo and most free site builders; ugc or nofollow on Medium, Quora and CSS-Tricks, and nofollow or script redirects on every press release site we checked; and redirects on LinkedIn Articles, Google Sites and Flipboard. A few platforms go further and set the whole page to noindex or nofollow, such as BiggerPockets member blogs, new Minds blog posts, Ko-fi posts and Product Hunt maker profiles.

Google describes these values in its Google Search Central guide to qualifying outbound links: ugc marks user-generated content such as comments and forum posts, sponsored marks paid placements, and nofollow covers the rest. Links marked this way “will generally not be followed,” so a nofollow link from Medium should not be counted on for ranking credit. It can still bring referral traffic, brand visibility and a profile that ranks for your name, which is what most of these platforms are good for in off-page SEO.

Do article submission sites still help SEO?

They help when a real audience reads what you publish, and they hurt when they are used to manufacture backlinks for search rankings. Google’s spam policies, updated on August 28, 2026, list as link spam “links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites,” “low-quality directory or bookmark site links” and “using automated programs or services to create links to your site.”

That rules out the tactics many old lists still recommend: tools that submit one text to hundreds of directories, keyword-rich anchor text in every author bio, and tiered networks of articles linking to other articles. A useful article on a niche platform where your customers read, with a plain link to a relevant page, stays within the policies. For many businesses, an article on LinkedIn or Medium also creates something AI assistants can read and cite, a channel our GEO agency works on.

If a past campaign left hundreds of directory links pointing at your site, start with a backlink review before you publish anything new. Our guide to what an SEO audit costs explains what that review covers.

How to submit an article the right way

Pick the platform your readers use

Start from the audience, not the list. A developer tutorial belongs on DEV Community, Hashnode or HackerNoon, a B2B point of view on LinkedIn Articles, a newsletter on Substack or Beehiiv, a finance analysis on Seeking Alpha. Two or three well-chosen platforms and high-quality content beat twenty random submissions.

Write a unique article for each platform

Each platform should get unique content: submitting the same text everywhere creates duplicate content on domains stronger than yours, and theirs may rank instead of your page. DEV Community lets you set a canonical URL, but Google’s canonicalization documentation says the canonical link element is not recommended to avoid duplication by syndication partners. The safer route is an adapted version: a new angle, a new introduction, and your full article kept on your own site.

Keep article and bio links natural

One or two links are enough: one in the body where it helps the reader, one in the author bio or resource box. Use your brand name or a plain description as anchor text rather than an exact-match keyword, and link to the page that answers what the article discusses. Read each platform’s submission guidelines first, since Vocal Media warns against forced hyperlinks and DZone rejects UTM links.

Track referral traffic, not link counts

In Google Analytics, referral traffic shows whether readers click through from each platform. In Search Console, check whether your own page gains impressions and organic traffic on the topic, then search the topic to see whether the platform’s copy outranks it. A platform that sends no referral traffic after three or four articles has told you what it is worth.

Building links beyond article submission sites

Article submission sites are a distribution channel for content marketing, and they rarely move search rankings on their own. At SEO Montreal, an SEO agency that has worked with more than 500 clients in over 25 industries, links come from editorial mentions, guest posts on real publications and content that other sites want to cite, as part of a complete off-page SEO and link building plan. Our case studies show what that produced in several industries, and our SEO pricing explains how a monthly mandate is built.

Want backlinks that hold up?

Send us your site: we look at your backlink profile and tell you what is worth building next.

FAQ: article submission sites

What are article submission sites?

Article submission sites are platforms where anyone can publish an article under their own name, usually with a link back to their website in the body or the author bio. Today they include blogging platforms like Medium and Substack, editorial sites like HackerNoon and DZone, and a few surviving article directories. Several older names, including EzineArticles and HubPages, did not accept new articles when we checked.

Do article submission sites still work for SEO in 2026?

They work for reach, referral traffic and brand visibility when you publish on platforms with real readers. As a link building tactic, their value is limited: many platforms mark links nofollow or ugc, and Google’s spam policies treat optimized anchor text in distributed articles and low-quality directory links as link spam. Publish for readers first and treat any followed link as a bonus.

Which article submission sites give dofollow links?

On the posts we checked in September 2026, body links carried no nofollow on Substack, DEV Community, freeCodeCamp News, Smashing Magazine, Towards Data Science, Zenodo and most free site builders, such as Wix, Jimdo and Webflow. Medium, Quora, CSS-Tricks and SooperArticles used nofollow or ugc, and every press release site we checked used nofollow or a script redirect. Platforms change these settings without notice, so check a recent post before you publish an article.

Is EzineArticles still accepting articles?

Not on the day we checked. On September 30, 2026, the ezinearticles.com domain did not resolve, and neither did GoArticles, another article directory that uses the same name servers. Both domains are still registered, so the sites could come back after an outage. HubPages, another name on most lists, closed to new content in November 2025.

What is the difference between article submission and guest posting?

Article submission means publishing on an open platform where you create the account and usually press publish yourself. Guest posting means pitching an article to a specific publication, where an editor decides whether it runs and how it links. Guest posts on relevant sites carry more weight, and Google’s spam policies apply to both when links use optimized anchor text.

Can I publish the same article on several sites?

You can, but it is rarely a good idea. Identical copies on stronger domains can outrank your own page, and Google says the canonical element is not the recommended fix for syndicated copies. Write an adapted version for each platform, with a new angle and introduction, and keep the complete article on your own website.

How many articles should I submit per month?

There is no useful quota. Two or three quality articles a month on platforms that fit your audience will teach you more than dozens of quick submissions. Track the referral traffic each platform sends, then publish more where readers respond. Mass-producing short articles only to place links is what Google’s spam policies list as low-value content created to manipulate linking and ranking signals.

Are instant approval article sites worth using?

Some are. Medium, Substack, LinkedIn Articles and DEV Community publish instantly and still have large audiences. Instant approval also means no moderation before publishing, which is why paste sites like Telegraph are full of spam pages. Judge a platform by who reads it, not by how fast it publishes, and skip any site whose main promise is a free backlink.

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