Most websites waste one of the easiest SEO opportunities: image alt text. Writing good alt texts can drive traffic from Google Images, improve accessibility, and reinforce your page's target keywords — all with a change of fewer than 10 words per image.
Alt text (alternative text) is an HTML attribute that describes the content of an image. It appears in the code like this:
<img src="running-shoes.webp" alt="Red Nike Air Zoom running shoes for women">It was originally designed for two purposes:
Over time it also became an important SEO signal: Google uses alt text to understand what an image shows and decide when to display it in search results.
Google cannot "see" images the way a human does. Although its AI has improved significantly, alt text remains one of the primary signals it uses to index images. Good alt text benefits your SEO in three ways:
Fact: Google Images drives more than 22% of all web searches. Ignoring alt text means leaving a quarter of your visual traffic potential on the table.
Good alt text follows these rules:
❌ Bad: alt="img001.jpg"
❌ Bad: alt="shoe image"
✅ Good: alt="Nike Air Max 270 white men's sneaker size 9"
❌ Bad: alt="screenshot"
✅ Good: alt="Google Analytics dashboard showing a 40% increase in organic traffic"
❌ Bad: alt="photo"
✅ Good: alt="Person compressing images on a laptop to optimize their website speed"
❌ Bad: alt="logo"
✅ Good: alt="ComprimirPro logo"
| Image type | What to include in alt text |
|---|---|
| E-commerce product | Brand, model, color, relevant size or variant |
| Blog photograph | What it shows + article context |
| Chart / infographic | What data or information it represents |
| Logo | "[Company name] logo" |
| Screenshot | What the screen shows and what it's for |
| Person / portrait | Name if public, or description of the activity |
Not all images need alt text. Purely decorative images (dividers, backgrounds, meaningless icons) should have an empty alt attribute:
<img src="decorative-divider.svg" alt="">The empty attribute tells screen readers to skip that image, improving the user experience. What you should never do is omit the alt attribute entirely — that generates accessibility errors and negative SEO signals.
Rule: if the image provides information to the user → write descriptive alt text. If it's purely decorative → alt="". Never omit the attribute.
In WordPress, you can add alt text in two ways:
Alt text improves your SEO, but a heavy image is still slow. Compress your images before uploading them to WordPress.
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