Image alt text

What good alt text looks like

A photo of a senior strategist analyzing SEO data on multiple monitors:

• ❌ Bad: alt="image", alt="seo seo agency seo expert"
• 🟡 Mediocre: alt="Person at computer"
• ✅ Good: alt="Resocial senior strategist reviewing AI citation tracking dashboard across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini"

The good version is descriptive, specific, naturally includes relevant terms, and would convey the image meaningfully to a screen-reader user.

Best practices

• Be specific — describe what’s actually in the image, not just the topic
• Keep it concise — under ~125 characters typically (screen readers truncate around there)
• Natural language — write like you’d describe the image to someone over the phone
• No “image of” / “picture of” prefix — screen readers already announce it’s an image
• Empty alt for decorative images — alt="" tells screen readers to skip purely decorative graphics
• Include relevant keywords organically — but only if they fit the actual image content

Special cases

• Logos — describe as alt="[Brand] logo". If the logo is the only content of a link, the alt text becomes the link’s accessible name.
• Charts and infographics — describe what the data shows, not just “chart of X”
• Icons — usually decorative; use alt="" or aria-hidden="true" on the parent
• Buttons with image — describe the action, not the image

What it doesn’t do

• Title attribute on images (title="...") is not the same as alt — title shows on hover but isn’t read by most screen readers
• Filename of the image (e.g., enterprise-seo.jpg) helps but doesn’t replace alt
• Surrounding caption helps Google Image search but doesn’t replace alt for accessibility

Audit

Most CMS systems have an alt-text audit screen. Tools like Screaming Frog and axe DevTools flag missing or empty alts. Aim for 100% coverage with meaningful descriptions on content images, intentional empties on decorative ones.