SEO & Marketing
What is image alt text and why does it matter?
Quick answer
Alt text (alternative text) is a short written description of an image, added in the HTML, that screen readers read aloud and browsers display if the image fails to load. It makes images accessible to visually impaired users and helps search engines understand and rank your pictures.
Good alt text describes what the image shows and its purpose in context, in plain language, for example "Red cotton kurta with embroidered sleeves" rather than "IMG_2043". Purely decorative images that add no meaning can have empty alt text so screen readers skip them.
Alt text serves two goals at once: accessibility, which is both the right thing to do and sometimes a legal requirement, and SEO, since it is how search engines read images and surface them in image search. Writing it well is a quick, high-value habit.
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