Alt Text, Done Right: The Overlooked SEO + Accessibility Win
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Somewhere on your site right now there is a photo Google reads as IMG_4032.jpg and a screen reader announces as image. Alt text is the one-line description that fixes both, and it may be the most skipped field on the web because skipping it never looks broken. The cost is real: search engines cannot rank photos they cannot parse, and visitors using screen readers hit a wall your sighted visitors never see. The fix costs a sentence per image. This guide covers how to write alt text that works, what to leave blank on purpose, and a routine for clearing your backlog in one sitting.
If you manage a website—any website—you've got hidden opportunities sitting in plain sight: your images.
Most small sites overlook alt text, even though it's one of the simplest ways to:
Improve accessibility (ADA/WCAG compliance)
Strengthen SEO and image visibility
Signal professionalism and care
Let's fix that.
What alt text actually does
Alt text (the alt attribute in an image tag) describes what an image shows and why it's there.
<img src="/logo.svg" alt="StoryPress Logo" />
It's read aloud by screen readers, displayed if an image can't load, and scanned by search engines to understand content.
Think of alt text as context, not decoration. It tells a non-visual visitor what matters about the image in that specific page.
Why it matters more than ever
Missing alt text remains one of the top accessibility errors online. WebAIM's 2025 study found over 55% of homepages have missing or useless alt text. Google explicitly says descriptive alt text helps it understand your images and improve visibility in Image Search. And when images fail to load—slow networks, email clients—alt text preserves meaning and flow.
It's one of the few things that improve both compliance and SEO in one shot. Tools like sitechecker.pro can scan your site for missing alt tags:
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5 rules for great alt text
Describe what's meaningful, not what's obvious. Bad: alt="photo of coffee cup". Good: alt="Barista pouring latte art at Bluebird Café counter".
Write for context. Describe the image in relation to the page's purpose. On a team page, note the person's name; on a tutorial, focus on what's being demonstrated.
Skip "image of" or "picture of." Screen readers already announce that.
Keep it concise. Aim for one short sentence (~100–125 characters).
Mark decorative images with empty alt (alt=""). That tells screen readers to skip them, reducing noise.
The ten-second formula: describe it like you're on the phone
Imagine a friend is on the phone and you need to tell them what's in the image. You wouldn't say 'image' or 'photo1-final-v2'. You'd say 'our head barber giving a fade in the Brooklyn shop.' That's it — that's good alt text. Not sure whether an image even needs a description? Follow the arrows:
❌ Common mistakes
Filenames as alt: alt="IMG_4321.jpg"
Keyword stuffing: alt="best custom website builder affordable small business..."
Repeating captions verbatim
Describing aesthetics only: "Beautiful stock photo of..." is useless to users.
✅ What good looks like
alt="Barista pouring latte art at Bluebird Café counter"
Honest, specific, one sentence
Written for the page's purpose
Searchable words appear naturally — no stuffing needed.
There's also a legal angle
In the US, thousands of lawsuits are filed every year against businesses whose websites don't work with screen readers, under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Small restaurants, dentists, and shops get these demand letters, not just big brands. Missing alt text is one of the first things automated accessibility scanners flag.
Nobody should write alt text out of fear. But if you needed one more reason to spend an afternoon on this, 'it materially reduces legal exposure' is a decent one.
How to fix your site this week
Make a list of your pages, starting with the money pages: home, services or products, contact.
For every image, ask: does this add information? If yes, describe it in one phone-call sentence. If it's decoration, mark it decorative (empty alt).
Do the images with text in them first — promos, banners, menus. Those are the worst accessibility failures.
Fix your logo and any linked images so the alt text says where the link goes.
Going forward, write the alt text the moment you upload an image. Ten seconds now beats an audit later.
Make it easier (and automatic)
Here's the part most people miss: you don't have to write every alt tag by hand. Tools like n8n, AI captioning models, and StoryPress's structured image fields make it possible to generate and validate alt text in batches. A StoryPress user recently built a flow that pulls all images from a Lightroom library, uses AI to generate context-appropriate alt descriptions, and syncs them back into their CMS.
One hour spent fixing alt text can make your site more discoverable, more compliant, and more human.
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