What is alt text?
Alt text is a short written description of an image, read by screen readers and used by search engines to understand what the image shows.
In plain English
It makes your site accessible to visually-impaired users and helps images rank in image search. Write it to describe the image naturally and specifically, not to stuff keywords.
Why it matters for AI search
AI engines use alt text and surrounding context to understand and describe your visuals, so good alt text makes your images, and the pages they sit on, more understandable and quotable.
Frequently asked
A concise, specific sentence, describe what matters in the image. Skip “image of” and avoid keyword stuffing.
Purely decorative images can use empty alt (alt="") so screen readers skip them; meaningful images always need a description.
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