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Add Alt Text to Every Image on Your Website

accessibilityseo

Alt text is one of those things that takes ten seconds per image and yet almost nobody does it. I audit websites regularly and missing alt text is one of the most common problems I find.

What alt text does

Alt text (short for “alternative text”) is a short description attached to an image in your website’s code. It serves two purposes. First, screen readers read it aloud to visually impaired visitors. Without it, those visitors get nothing — or worse, they hear the image filename. Second, Google uses it to understand what your image shows. Google can’t see pictures. Alt text is how you tell it what’s there.

How to write it

Describe what the image shows, plainly and briefly. Don’t stuff it with keywords. Don’t start with “Image of” or “Photo of” — the screen reader already knows it’s an image.

  • Good: Cyclists racing through a mountain pass during stage 12 of the Tour de France
  • Bad: image_DSC4052_final.jpg
  • Also bad: cycling photo tour de france cycling race professional cycling best cycling photos

If the image is purely decorative — a divider, a background pattern — leave the alt text empty. An empty alt attribute (alt="") tells screen readers to skip it entirely, which is the right behavior.

In WordPress

When you upload an image in WordPress, there’s an alt text field right in the media library. Fill it in at upload time and it will carry through everywhere you use that image. Going back to fill in alt text for existing images is tedious but worth doing — start with your most important pages. On Katherine Marks’ photography portfolio, for instance, every image has descriptive alt text that helps her architectural photographs rank in Google Image Search.

It matters more than you think

Accessibility isn’t optional and it isn’t charity. In many jurisdictions it’s a legal requirement. But beyond compliance, it’s simply good practice. You’re building a website for everyone, not just people who can see perfectly. And the SEO benefit is real — Google rewards sites that provide good alt text with better image search rankings.