Add Alt Text to Every Image: The Two-Minute Discoverability Win
A page that is mostly photos looks like empty space to a crawler. It cannot see that your shot is a foggy 6am climb in the Dolomites, or a flat-lay of hand-poured candles on a linen runner. You have to spell it out, and that is the whole job of image alt text for SEO. For visual creators it is one of the smallest tasks on the entire site and one of the very few that changes whether a stranger ever finds you.
Written for the Person Who Cannot See It
Alt text is the short description tucked into an image's HTML. It exists for screen readers first, so a blind visitor hears the photo described instead of the word "image" read out forty times over. That reason alone settles the question of whether to bother.
The search payoff is a bonus on top. Google Images is its own engine, and plenty of people start there: recipe shots, interiors, tattoo flash, hair before-and-afters. The alt text, the file name and the caption around the photo are most of what Google has to go on. Leave them blank and you have shut a door that was already open.
Describe It Like You Would Out Loud
Be specific and be plain. Drop "image of", since the tag already announces that much. And do not pack it with keywords, because a string of repeated search terms reads as spam to a person and a crawler alike. Same picture, three ways.
"photo
"Slatesource3rd of August 2026
Lazy. A screen reader says "photo" and moves on. Google files a photo of nothing in particular. Four characters that describe zero of the frame.
"wedding photographer wedding photos wedding portraits
"Slatesource3rd of August 2026
Stuffed. Every word is a search term and not one of them says what is happening in the picture. Read it aloud and you can hear the spam.
"bride and groom laughing under string lights at an outdoor barn reception
"Slatesource3rd of August 2026
Right. About ten words, names what is actually in the frame, and happens to carry terms a real person might type. Nobody had to keyword anything.
125Characters before the cut
If the image is pure decoration, a hairline divider or a background texture, give it an empty alt so screen readers skip straight past it. An empty description is a real answer. Do not manufacture words for filler.
Rename the File on the Way In
The other two-second habit sits one step earlier. A file called amalfi-coast-sunset.jpg tells a crawler something before the alt text even loads. IMG_4821.jpg tells it nothing, forty times a gallery.
Typing the description while the photo is still on the clipboard.
Two minutes an image only stays cheap while you write it as you go. Nobody finishes the retrofit. Write the description the moment you drop the photo in and it quietly stops being a task at all.
Words Beside the Picture
A slate never leaves a photo standing on its own. A Gallery caption, an Info card above the frame, a Note underneath it: every one of those is text a crawler can read and a screen reader can speak, sitting right where the image is. Fill them in once, at upload, and the page stays legible to search and to anyone who cannot see the picture. Tiny habit, real reach.