Open the image library on most websites and you’ll find the same thing: alt text that’s either blank, a filename like IMG_4823.jpg, or the lazy classic, “image of.” All three help no one — not screen-reader users, not search engines, and not the AI answer engines now lifting images into results.
Good alt text isn’t hard. It’s a 30-second habit. The difference is just knowing what “good” looks like.
What good alt text actually does
Useful alt text describes the purpose of the image in its context, not a generic label. “Orange e-bike at a kerbside charging dock” tells a screen-reader user what’s there, gives search engines real context, and gives an AI answer engine something worth surfacing. “IMG_4823.jpg” does none of that.
The rules of thumb
- Describe, don’t label. Convey what matters about the image where it sits, not just its category.
- Capture embedded text. If the image contains words — a banner, a stat — include them.
- Skip the filler. No “image of” or “photo of”; screen readers already announce it’s an image.
- Don’t keyword-stuff. Write for a human; the SEO benefit follows.
- Decorative images get empty alt. alt="" tells assistive tech to skip purely decorative graphics.
Why it pays off three ways
The same sentence does triple duty. It makes the page accessible (and compliant), it strengthens image SEO, and it makes your images eligible to be pulled into AI answers, which increasingly cite well-described visuals. One habit, three returns.
Doing it at scale
The catch is volume. Hand-writing good alt text for hundreds of existing images is the kind of task that never gets finished. The AI Alt Text Generator writes descriptive, WCAG-aligned alt text for up to 30 images at once — turning a backlog into a batch job.
If your image library is full of filenames and blanks, bulk-generate proper alt text on the AI Alt Text Generator page.