Image submission sites let you publish and share your images on high traffic platforms, and the honest truth is what they deliver is mostly brand visibility and referral traffic, not link equity. Most image sites make links nofollow, so do not expect a ranking boost from the links themselves. What you can get is exposure, clicks, and audience, if you use the right platforms well. This guide lists 20 plus platforms grouped by type, how to optimize your submissions, and which five are actually worth your time.
General image and photo sharing platforms
These large, mainstream platforms have huge audiences and are the best for real visibility and traffic. Most mark links nofollow, so treat them as traffic and branding tools.
- Pinterest: Audience is huge and buyer intent is high. Links are nofollow, but Pinterest drives real referral traffic. Best content: infographics, how to visuals, product images.
- Flickr: A large photography community. Links in your profile and descriptions are nofollow. Best content: original, high quality photography.
- Imgur: Massive general audience and viral potential. Links are nofollow. Best content: memes, reaction images, shareable visuals.
- Instagram: Enormous reach, though only your bio link is clickable. Best content: lifestyle, brand, and behind the scenes images.
- Tumblr: Visual microblogging with a creative community. Links are nofollow. Best content: aesthetic, artistic, and fandom visuals.
- Reddit image communities: Topic based subreddits with large audiences. Links are nofollow. Best content: images that fit a specific community’s interest.
Design focused platforms
These platforms suit creative professionals and designers, offering a portfolio and a targeted, engaged audience for visual work.
- Behance: Adobe’s portfolio platform for creatives. Great for showcasing design projects and reaching other professionals. Best content: design portfolios, case studies.
- Dribbble: A community for designers to share work and get discovered. Best content: UI, illustration, and branding shots.
- DeviantArt: A long running art community with a broad audience. Best content: illustration, digital art, and fan art.
- 500px: A platform for serious photographers to showcase and sell work. Best content: high end photography.
- ArtStation: Popular with game, film, and concept artists. Best content: professional digital and concept art.
Stock contribution platforms
If you create photos or graphics, contributing to stock platforms can build visibility and even earn income, while getting your work in front of buyers.
- Unsplash: Hugely popular free photo platform with massive reach and attribution. Best content: high quality free to use photography.
- Pexels: Another major free stock platform with a large audience. Best content: versatile, high quality photos and videos.
- Pixabay: A big free media library covering photos, illustrations, and vectors. Best content: broadly useful visuals.
- Shutterstock: A leading paid stock marketplace where contributors earn per download. Best content: commercial, professional imagery.
- Adobe Stock: Integrated with Adobe tools and reaches many buyers. Best content: polished, commercial visuals.
Other useful image platforms
- SlideShare: For image heavy presentations and infographics with a professional audience.
- WeHeartIt: An aesthetic image community popular with younger users.
- Google Photos shared albums: For sharing image collections publicly.
- Photobucket: A long standing image hosting and sharing service.
How to optimize submitted images
Getting value from image submission depends on doing it well. Start with descriptive, keyword aware file names before you upload, so your image is easier to find, using real words instead of a camera’s default filename. Write clear, natural descriptions and titles for each image, since these help platform search and give context to viewers.
Add relevant tags and choose the right category so the right audience discovers your work. Where the platform allows a link, put your website in your profile and, where permitted, in image descriptions, accepting that these are usually nofollow but still clickable for traffic. On visual platforms like Pinterest, link each image to the specific, relevant page on your site rather than only your homepage, so interested viewers land somewhere useful.
Finally, submit your best original work, since quality images get saved, shared, and clicked, which is where the real value lies.
Which five are actually worth the time
You do not need to be on every platform. For most people, five deliver the vast majority of the value. Pinterest is first, because its buyer intent and referral traffic are genuinely strong for the right niches.
Behance or Dribbble comes next if you do design work, offering a professional audience and portfolio in one. Unsplash or Pexels is worth it if you create photography, since the reach and attribution build real brand visibility. Instagram earns a place for brand building and audience, despite its limited linking.
Finally, a relevant Reddit image community can drive surprising traffic when your visual genuinely fits. Focus your effort on the two or three of these that match your content, do them consistently and well, and skip the long tail of low value sites that return almost nothing. Note that this is about publishing your images for reach; if you want to find images instead, see our guide to image search engines.
Why the “150+ high DA sites” lists are a waste of an afternoon
Search this topic and most results promise a list of 100, 150 or 250 image submission sites, usually sorted by domain authority. Look at what else is on those pages and the incentive becomes obvious: several of them run a “buy quality backlinks” pitch directly above the list.
The lists themselves do not survive contact with reality. A large share of the entries are dead, parked, or long abandoned. The ones still running are directory style image hosts with no audience, which means no traffic and no discovery, and their links are nofollow anyway. Submitting the same image to 150 of them produces 150 nofollow links from pages nobody visits, and it takes a full afternoon.
Domain authority is also the wrong filter here. It is a third party score of a domain, not a measure of whether that specific page will ever be seen by a person. A high DA image host with no active users sends you nothing. A mid DA subreddit with the right audience sends you real visitors. Judge these platforms on whether people actually browse them.
Check the platform still exists before you spend an evening on it
Image platforms close, and lists like this one keep recommending them for years afterwards because nobody goes back to look.
Ello is the example worth knowing. It appears on almost every image sharing roundup published in the last decade, and it shut down permanently in July 2023.
There was no announcement and no export offered. Users lost nine years of uploaded work overnight, which is a stronger argument than any ranking factor for where you choose to put your images.
It has been removed from the list above for that reason, and it is worth checking any name you find elsewhere before signing up.
Which leads to the rule that matters more than platform selection. Never let a third party platform hold the only copy of anything.
Your own site should have the original, at full resolution, and everything you upload elsewhere should be a copy you can replace. That way a platform closing costs you an audience rather than an archive.
The quick pre signup check is thirty seconds. Does the site load, has anything been posted recently, and does a search for the platform name plus shutting down return anything.
Communities die quietly, and the last posts on the homepage tell you more than the domain authority ever will.
What these platforms can and cannot do for search
The honest framing is worth repeating, because the whole category is sold on a promise it does not deliver.
Almost every link you get from these is nofollow. Pinterest, Flickr and the rest qualify their outbound links, so you are not building link authority by uploading images, whatever a submission service tells you.
What you can get is real: referral traffic from people who saw the image, brand exposure, and a presence in the platform’s own search.
For Google Images specifically, your own site does the work. Images rank in Google from the page they sit on, using the filename, the alt text, the surrounding content and the page’s own authority.
Uploading the same picture to fifteen sharing platforms does nothing for that, because Google is ranking their page rather than yours, and often theirs will outrank you for your own image.
Which is the trap in the whole approach. Putting a high resolution original on a platform with more authority than your site can mean their copy ranks and yours does not.
Upload a smaller version, keep the full one on your own page, and make sure your page is the one worth landing on.
What actually gets your images found in Google
If your goal is image visibility rather than a portfolio presence, the work happens on your own site, not on someone else’s platform. Google publishes its requirements plainly, and they are all things you control.
Give files real names before you upload. Google says filenames give it “very light clues” about subject matter, so a descriptive name beats a camera default like IMG_4471.jpg, though this is the weakest of the signals.
Write alt text as your main lever. Google calls it the most important attribute for supplying metadata about an image, and asks for useful, information rich text that fits the page’s context. It also explicitly warns that stuffing keywords into alt text may get your site treated as spam, so write it for someone who cannot see the image.
Place images next to the text they belong to. Google extracts subject matter from the surrounding page content, including captions and titles, and expects images to sit on pages relevant to what they show. An image dropped into an unrelated post works against you.
Submit an image sitemap for anything Google might not otherwise find. Usefully, an image sitemap may list URLs on other domains, so images served from a CDN still get discovered.
Add structured data if you want the badge. Google can show images in rich results with a prominent badge in Google Images, and the image attribute is required to be eligible.
Then deal with weight. Images are usually the largest part of a page, so responsive images and modern formats are as much an image SEO task as a speed one. Check yours in PageSpeed Insights.
Frequently asked questions
Do image submissions help SEO?
Image submissions help SEO mostly indirectly, through brand visibility and referral traffic rather than direct link value, since most image sites use nofollow links. They can send interested visitors to your site and build awareness, which supports your overall growth. So while they will not directly boost rankings the way a strong editorial backlink does, quality image submissions still have real, if indirect, value.
Is Pinterest good for backlinks?
Pinterest links are nofollow, so they do not pass direct ranking value, but Pinterest is excellent for referral traffic. For the right niches, such as food, design, fashion, and how to content, it can send significant visitors to your site. So it is not a backlink strategy, but it is one of the best image platforms for driving real, targeted traffic.
Are image submission links dofollow?
Most image submission and photo sharing platforms use nofollow links, including Pinterest, Flickr, Imgur, and Tumblr, meaning they do not pass normal ranking credit. A few smaller sites may allow dofollow links, but those usually have little authority. The real value of image submission is visibility and referral traffic, not dofollow link equity, so set your expectations accordingly.
What image sites drive real traffic?
Pinterest is the clear leader for referral traffic in many niches, followed by Instagram for brand reach and engaged Reddit image communities when your visual fits. Design platforms like Behance and Dribbble drive targeted professional traffic for creatives. Focus on the two or three that match your content and audience, since a few well chosen platforms deliver far more traffic than spreading thin across many.
How do I get my images to rank in Google Images?
Work on your own site rather than submission platforms. Google’s stated priorities are alt text that describes the image in the page’s context, images placed next to the text they relate to, descriptive filenames, an image sitemap so nothing goes undiscovered, and structured data if you want the badge in Google Images. Fast loading matters too, since images are usually the heaviest part of a page.
How many image submission sites should I use?
Two or three, chosen to match your content. The long lists of 100 or 150 sites circulating for this keyword are mostly dead or audience free hosts, and their links are nofollow regardless. One platform where your audience actually browses beats fifty where nobody does.
Do image submission sites help SEO?
Not through links, since almost all of them mark outbound links nofollow, so uploading images builds no link authority whatever a submission service claims. What they can genuinely provide is referral traffic from people who saw the image, brand exposure and presence in the platform own search. For Google Images your own site does the work, since images rank from the page they sit on using the filename, alt text, surrounding content and that page authority.
Should I upload my full resolution images to sharing platforms?
Upload a smaller version and keep the original on your own page. A platform with more authority than your site can end up outranking you for your own image, so giving them the best copy works against you. More importantly, never let a third party hold the only copy of anything: Ello shut down permanently in July 2023 with no announcement and no export, and users lost nine years of uploaded work overnight.