Alttagger Guide
Alt text is a critical but often overlooked component of web accessibility and SEO. When implemented correctly, alt text makes your website more inclusive, improves your search rankings, and enhances the overall user experience.
Alt text (alternative text) is a short, descriptive text attribute added to image tags in HTML. This text serves as a replacement for the image when it cannot be viewed or accessed visually. Alt text is essential for accessibility, SEO performance, displaying when images fail to load, and providing contextual understanding of your visual content.
"Alt text serves as the voice of your images for those who cannot see them. It's not just about accessibility compliance—it's about creating an inclusive web experience for everyone."
Good alt text should avoid keyword stuffing. While alt text is important for SEO, stuffing it with keywords creates a poor experience for screen reader users and may trigger search engine penalties. Instead, use natural language that accurately describes the image's content while incorporating relevant keywords where they make sense.
When writing alt text, omit phrases like "Image of" or "Picture of." Screen readers already announce that an element is an image, so including these phrases is redundant and wastes valuable character space. Focus instead on describing the content and meaning of the image.
Include any text that appears within images in your alt attribute. If your image contains text that conveys important information, such as an infographic with statistics or a button with action text, this content must be included in your alt text to maintain accessibility.
For product images, focus on key features, colors, and uses that would help someone make a
purchasing decision. A good example would be: alt="Stainless steel programmable coffee maker with 12-cup carafe and built-in grinder".
When adding alt text to charts and graphs, summarize the data trend or main conclusion, not
every data point. For instance: alt="Graph showing steady increase in sales from January to June 2023 with 45% overall growth".
Not all images require alt text. Decorative images that don't add informational content
should use empty alt attributes (alt="") to be ignored by screen
readers. This applies to images used for aesthetic purposes only, such as decorative borders, spacers,
or background textures.
alt="Dalmatian puppy playing fetch with a blue frisbee in a park"
alt="Woman in business attire presenting sales data on whiteboard during team meeting"
alt="Chart showing customer satisfaction increasing 23% after implementing new support system"
While accessibility should be your primary motivation for using alt text, proper implementation also benefits your SEO efforts. Include target keywords naturally when relevant to the image content and use descriptive filenames that reinforce the alt text (e.g., "golden-retriever-puppy.jpg" instead of "IMG00023.JPG").
Ensure image relevance to the surrounding content and page topic, and add structured data where appropriate to help search engines better understand your images. Maintain consistency between image captions and alt text while avoiding duplication.
To ensure your alt text is serving its purpose, try using a screen reader to experience how your content is read aloud. Turn off images in your browser to see if the alt text effectively replaces the visual content and use accessibility testing tools like WAVE, axe, or Lighthouse to audit your website.
Modern AI technology, like that used by Alttagger, can help generate high-quality alt text automatically by recognizing objects, people, and actions in images, understanding the context of where images appear, and creating natural language descriptions that balance detail with conciseness.
Alttagger scales alt text creation across thousands of images, making it an efficient solution for websites with extensive image libraries. However, while AI can dramatically improve efficiency, human review remains important for ensuring accuracy and contextual relevance.
Creating effective alt text is both an art and a science. By focusing on descriptive, contextual, and concise attributes, you can make your website more accessible while improving your SEO performance. Remember that good alt text serves real people first and search engines second.
By implementing the practices outlined in this guide, you'll create a more inclusive website experience for all users while simultaneously improving your visibility in search results—a true win-win approach to web content.