How to write good alt text (and where an alt text generator helps)
Alt text is the text a screen reader speaks in place of an image, and the text search engines use to understand it. Good alt text describes what the image shows in the context of the page, in one plain sentence. It doesn't start with 'image of', it doesn't repeat the caption, and it isn't a list of keywords.
The AI alt text generator gives you a strong first draft in seconds. Your job is the context: the same photo of a red sneaker might need 'Red canvas high-top sneaker, side view' on a shop page and 'Our founder's first prototype, 2019' on an About page.
| Example | |
|---|---|
| Too vague | shoe |
| Keyword stuffing | red shoes sneakers buy red sneakers cheap red shoes |
| Good | Red canvas high-top sneaker with white laces, side view |
Alt text rules that trip people up
A few cases come up again and again in accessibility audits:
- Decorative images (dividers, background shapes) should have an empty alt attribute, alt="", so screen readers skip them.
- If an image is a link or button, describe where it goes or what it does, not what it looks like.
- Images of text (a quote card, a poster) need the text itself in the alt text.
- Charts and infographics need a short alt text plus the full data in the page or a caption.
- Don't put file names like IMG_2041.jpg in alt text; they mean nothing to anyone.
Does alt text help SEO?
Yes, modestly. Google uses alt text, along with the file name and surrounding text, to understand images, which helps them appear in Google Images. Descriptive alt text also gives the page itself a bit more relevant content. It won't rescue weak pages, but missing alt text is a free fix that helps both rankings and real users.
A quick workflow for a whole site: export a list of images with empty alt attributes from your SEO crawler or CMS, run the important ones through the generator, and review each suggestion against the page it sits on. Product, article and team images matter most; decorative graphics can stay empty.
