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Alt text and SEO
Google’s article about images has a heading “Use descriptive filenames, titles, and alt text”. This is no coincidence. Google places a relatively high value on alt text. They use it to determine what is in the image and how it relates to the surrounding text. Adding good alt text can be a chore, especially if you use many images. For sites with large product catalogs, we built Yoast AI Generate for image alt text that reads your product data and generates a relevant alt tag. Validate and apply.
You should always add images to your posts and pages to make your content more descriptive and appealing. By adding alt text to your images, you provide screen readers, AI platforms, and search engine users with a textual description of what’s on that image. This improves accessibility, and including your keywords helps search engines and AI platforms understand your product images.
We’re not saying you should spam your focus keyphrase into every alt tag. You need good, high-quality, relevant images for your posts, with the focus keyword in the alt text where it makes sense. Here’s Google’s advice on choosing a good alt text:
When writing alt text, focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and is in context of the content of the page. Avoid filling alt attributes with keywords (also known as keyword stuffing) as it results in a negative user experience and may cause your site to be seen as spam.
If your image is of a specific product, include both the full product name and the product ID in the alt tag so it can be found more easily. In general, if a keyphrase could be useful for finding something that is in the image, include it in the alt tag if you can. Also, don’t forget to change the image file name to something describing what’s on it.
Alt and title attributes in WordPress
WordPress makes it easy to add alt text. When you upload an image, fill in the Alt Text field in the media library. WordPress copies the filename if you leave it blank, but that’s not helpful. Take a moment to write a proper description. WordPress also lets you mark an image as decorative, if necessary. Yoast SEO AI+ and Yoast WooCommerce SEO generate alt text for your product images with AI, right in the product editor or the Yoast SEO bulk editor. Review the suggestions and apply what works
Alt text, AI, and visual search, or how machines can see your images
Today, many people use the cameras on their smartphones to search for things online. They point their phones at a chair or a pair of shoes and ask Google to find it. AI Mode in Search accepts photos, and Google Lens helps shoppers identify products on the street. All of this means that your alt text matters more than ever.
Google’s AI uses computer vision to analyze images. While it’s good at recognizing objects and patterns, it has trouble understanding context and specific product details. Your alt text can help these machines to see by offering extra information about the images. This way, you give AI platforms what they need to match your images to people’s searches.
When you use the Lens app to search for a product, Google combines what it captures in the images with what you wrote about it. Here’s an example: if your alt text says “red waterproof running shoe, size 10, breathable mesh upper,” the AI connects that description to the visual input. As a result, your image might appear when someone searches for “waterproof running shoes” or uses Lens on a similar shoe.
AI Overviews work the same way. Google pulls images from across the web to illustrate its answers, and it could use your alt text to decide which images fit the query. Therefore, good descriptions increase your chances of showing up in these results.
Optimizing for visual search
Here is how to optimize for visual search. You can find more tips in our image SEO article:
Write alt text that answers the question “what is this and why does it matter?” Include product names, features, colors, and context. Keep it natural, and do not even think about stuffing keywords.
Add structured data to your images, which describes your content to search engines. Furthermore, it helps AI platforms understand and categorize your images.
Use descriptive file names, so instead of “IMG_1234.jpg,” try “red-waterproof-running-shoe.jpg.”
Test your images, so upload them to Google Lens to see what comes up. If you’re not happy with the results, adjust your alt text and try again.
Remember, the goal stays the same. You’re helping machines understand your images as we humans do. Do that well, and you can show up in more places, including the list of AI platforms that keeps growing by the day.
Use AI to write alt text, but check its work
We all know that writing a good alt text for hundreds of product images takes a lot of time. AI can help you do that job a lot faster.
AI alt text tools use computer vision to analyze your images and automatically generate descriptions. Upload a photo of a coffee mug in the product editor or the Yoast SEO bulk editor. Add a focus keyphrase in Yoast SEO, and the AI returns alt text like ‘blue ceramic mug with handle on wooden table’.
The technology has improved quickly over the years. Today, good tools can accurately recognize products, colors, settings, actions, and more. For e-commerce sites with large catalogs, this can save a huge amount of time. Clear the backlog without writing every description yourself.
AI isn’t perfect
Unfortunately, generic AI doesn’t understand your products, but ours reads your product data. It cannot tell whether your navy shirt is blue or whether the model is smiling. It does not distinguish between decorative images and those that carry crucial information. Most importantly, it cannot judge whether its description helps someone who cannot see the image.
It’s good to remember that the AI is not the expert; you are. The results it produces give you a good starting point, but you still need to review and edit. In some cases, you even have to rewrite or regenerate it completely.
Use AI for the biggest jobs, like your product catalog. That way, you can focus on making the best possible alt text for your homepage hero image, landing pages, and content that explains complex ideas. Charts, infographics, and screenshots deserve your own words, because AI often produces generic descriptions for them.
Keep it simple:
- Generate alt text for your images with Yoast AI Generate for image alt text
- Review each and every suggestion before publishing
- Rewrite and correct every wrong suggestion
- Don’t forget to add your brand voice where it matters most
Yoast SEO AI+ and Yoast WooCommerce SEO do this for product images, right in the Yoast SEO bulk editor. You only have to add focus keyphrases, generate the alt text, review and approve the suggestions.
The speed at which the AI works is great, but please use your own judgment. Let AI handle the volume, but use your eyes and expertise to ensure every image serves your readers.
Read more about image SEO
We have a popular, in-depth article about image SEO. That post describes many different ways to optimize images but is relatively lacking in detail when it comes to alt and title tags. Think of this as an add-on to that article. That article is recommended reading if you want to learn more good practices for image SEO.
Read more: Optimizing images for search engines »
