Image Alt Text: Describe the Photo, Not Your Keywords

Somewhere on your website there’s a photo with an alt text that reads “IMG_4471.jpg”. Or worse, “best web design Palm Coast cheap web design near me.” I see both all the time, and I honestly can’t decide which one is sadder.

Alt text is the one thing on your site that’s written for people who can’t see the picture, and also for the robots that can’t either. Most small business sites skip it or stuff it. Let’s fix that in about ten minutes.

The short version

• Alt text describes what’s in the image and why it’s there, in plain words, like you’re telling a friend on the phone.
• Decorative images (swirls, dividers, background textures) get an empty alt so screen readers skip them.
• Keyword stuffing in alt text helps nobody. It’s just a worse version of the 2009 footer link farm.

What is alt text on a website, anyway?

Alt text is a short written description attached to an image in your site’s code. It shows up when the image can’t load, and it’s what a screen reader says out loud to someone who can’t see the photo.

That’s the whole job. Not a ranking trick, not a place to park your services list. It’s a caption for someone who’s missing the picture (a blind visitor, a person on terrible hotel Wi-Fi, a search engine trying to figure out what the heck it’s looking at).

Think about the last time you had to describe a photo over the phone. You didn’t say “plumber Palm Coast best plumber.” You said “it’s a guy under a sink holding a wrench, looking unhappy.” Do that.

How do I write good alt text for a small business site?

Write one short sentence that says what the image shows and why it matters on that page. Usually 5 to 15 words is plenty.

A few quick examples of the difference:

• Bad: “IMG_4471.jpg”
• Also bad: “kitchen remodel best kitchen remodeler near me affordable”
• Good: “White shaker cabinets and a butcher block island in a finished kitchen remodel”

Notice the good one is boring. That’s the point. If a stranger could picture the photo from your sentence, you win. If the keyword happens to fit naturally, fine. If you have to shoehorn it in, cut it.

And skip “image of” or “photo of” at the start. The screen reader already announces that it’s an image. Saying it twice is like a waiter telling you “this is a menu” while handing you a menu.

Do decorative images need alt text?

No. If an image is pure decoration, give it an empty alt (alt with nothing between the quotes) so assistive tools skip it instead of reading out “decorative swirl, decorative swirl, decorative swirl.”

Imagine listening to your whole homepage through a speaker, and every fourth sentence is a file name. That’s what you’re doing to people when the alt is missing entirely. Missing and empty are not the same thing: empty is a deliberate “skip this,” missing is a shrug.

A quick gut check: if you deleted the image and the page still made complete sense, it’s decoration. If it carries information (a menu board, a team photo, a before and after), it needs words.

What about logos, buttons, and text inside images?

If the image contains text, the alt text should say the same thing the text says. A logo linking to your homepage should be described by what it does, like “Chenzo Designs, home,” not “logo.”

Same goes for a flyer or menu you’ve posted as a picture. Hear me out: the best fix is to put the real text on the page as actual text. But if it’s staying an image, the alt text needs to carry the important stuff, like hours, prices, and the date of the event. A flyer that says “Fish Fry Friday” in the picture and “flyer.png” in the code is a damn locked door.

Does alt text help with SEO and AI search?

Yes, a little, and mostly as a side effect of being clear. Search engines and AI tools can read your words far more easily than they can interpret a picture, so a plain description of what’s in the photo gives them one more clean signal about the page.

But treat it as a bonus. Write it for the human first and the robot gets what it needs for free. The stuffed version is the one that makes your site look sloppy, and honestly, it just reads like a pain in the ass for everyone involved.

It also ties into accessibility. Missing alt text is one of the most common things that comes up when a site gets reviewed for it, and it’s one of the cheapest to fix. If you want the bigger picture, I wrote about why a little blue accessibility button won’t save you, and my ADA compliance page covers what I actually do about it.

Questions people ask

How long should alt text be?

Keep it to a sentence, usually under about 125 characters. If you need a paragraph to explain an image, it probably belongs in the page copy, not the alt.

Should I add alt text to every image in WordPress?

Every image that means something, yes. In the media library there’s an “Alternative Text” box on each image. Decorative ones can be left empty on purpose, as long as your theme handles that properly.

Can AI write my alt text?

It can give you a first draft, and it’s decent at describing a plain photo. It doesn’t know why the image matters on your page, so read every one before you keep it. It’ll happily call your cousin’s food truck “a vehicle on a road.”

Fix it this week

Open your homepage and your top three service pages. Check the images on each one. Anything with a file name or a keyword pile gets a real sentence, and anything decorative gets left empty on purpose. That’s maybe fifteen images and one cup of coffee.

If you’ve got a few hundred images and zero patience, that’s exactly the kind of cleanup I do. Send me the details on the start a project page and we’ll sort it out.