Alt Text

Alt text (the alt attribute) is a written description of an image in the HTML. Screen readers read it aloud for visually impaired users, and it displays if an image fails to load. It is also how search engines understand what an image shows, since they cannot fully "see" pictures.

Write concise, accurate descriptions of what each meaningful image depicts, including relevant terms naturally where they fit — but describe the image honestly rather than stuffing keywords. Decorative images that add no information should have empty alt text so screen readers skip them. Good alt text is the primary lever for ranking in Google Images, which drives real traffic in visual niches.

Senior practitioners treat alt text as both an accessibility obligation (a legal requirement in many jurisdictions) and an underused traffic channel, and they build it into content QA rather than leaving it to chance. They prioritise it on images that can earn image-search traffic (products, diagrams, original visuals), enforce empty alt on decorative assets, and recognise that as multimodal AI search grows, described images become another surface to be understood and cited on.