Missing alt text on your website images? You are not alone.
It is one of those small SEO jobs that often gets ignored because it feels technical, fiddly, or buried somewhere inside the website editor. Hardly glamorous. No fireworks. No dramatic SEO theatre.
But alt text matters. It helps search engines understand your images, supports accessibility, and gives your website another simple way to be clearer online.
For small businesses, that is the sort of win worth taking. Especially when the fix is usually easier than the faff around it.
What's inside? (TL;DR)
This article explains what image alt tags are, why they matter for SEO and accessibility, and how small businesses can use them properly without overcomplicating the job.
It also covers how the KickstartSEO Onsite Optimizer and Optimiser AI can make alt text easier to manage.
Useful Sections
Alt text will not magically drag a poor website to page one by lunchtime. Nice thought, but no.
What it can do is remove one more area of confusion for search engines and make your website more useful for real people. That is usually where good SEO starts: clearer pages, better structure, and fewer missed opportunities.
What Are Image Alt Tags?
Alt tags, or alt text, are short text descriptions added to images on your website.
They help explain what an image shows when search engines, screen readers, or other tools cannot understand the image by sight alone.
Without alt text, Google has less context about your images, and people using screen readers may miss information that matters.
Think of alt text as a simple label. Not a sales pitch. Not a keyword dumping ground. Just a clear, useful description of the image.
Why Your Business Needs Alt Tags
Small businesses competing online need every sensible advantage they can get. Alt text helps in several ways:
It gives search engines more context about your images
It can help your images appear in image search results
It improves accessibility for people using screen readers
It provides backup text if an image fails to load
It helps make your website clearer and better structured
For local businesses, image alt text can also help add useful context around services, products, locations, team photos, premises, and real work examples.
That does not mean stuffing every image with town names and keywords until it reads like a ransom note. It means describing the image properly, and including location detail where it genuinely helps.
How To Write Good Alt Text
Keep it simple. Describe what the image shows in plain English.
Bad alt text usually looks like this:
img1234.jpgproduct photored chair buy now best price office furniture desk chair comfortable cheapnothing at all
Good alt text is clearer:
Red leather ergonomic office chair with adjustable armsKickstartSEO team reviewing website performance in the officePlumber fixing a kitchen tap in a Milton Keynes homeFront entrance of Smith's Bakery on Bedford High Street
The goal is to help people and search engines understand the image. If you have to perform linguistic gymnastics to squeeze in another keyword, stop. The poor alt tag has suffered enough.
Quick Alt Text Tips
Follow these simple rules:
Keep descriptions concise
Describe the image accurately
Use keywords naturally where they fit
Include location details for relevant local business photos
Avoid repeating the same alt text across different images
Skip decorative images where alt text adds no value
Match the image description to the page context
Check spelling before publishing
Update alt text when you change images
You do not need to write an essay for every image. In most cases, one clear sentence or phrase is enough.
Common Alt Text Mistakes
The most common mistake is having no alt text at all.
After that, the usual suspects are:
Using the same alt text on several different images
Writing descriptions that are far too long
Stuffing keywords into every image
Writing vague descriptions such as “image” or “photo”
Forgetting to update alt text when an image changes
Adding location names where they make no sense
Describing decorative graphics as if they are important content
Another common mistake is starting every alt tag with “image of” or “picture of”. In most cases, that is not needed because screen readers already announce that the item is an image.
Fixing Alt Text Does Not Need To Be A CMS Treasure Hunt
In theory, fixing alt text is simple:
Find the images on your website
Check which ones are missing alt text
Add a useful description
Save your changes
Check the page afterwards
In practice, many website systems make this more annoying than it needs to be. The setting may be buried in the media library, hidden inside a page builder, or awkward to update across several pages.
That is one reason we built the KickstartSEO Onsite Optimizer. It makes it easier to find and update missing image alt text without faffing around in your CMS.
If you are an Optimiser AI subscriber, Norman can go a step further and help do the work for you. You stay in control, but the job is not left sitting on the “I really should sort that” pile for another six months.
Check Your Image Alt Text Today
Alt text is not the biggest SEO job on your website. But it is one of the simple ones that can make your site clearer, more accessible, and easier for search engines to understand.
Start with your most important pages. Check your homepage, service pages, product pages, and location pages. Look for missing, vague, or duplicated alt text.
Then fix what matters first.
SEO is rarely about one magic trick. It is usually about removing friction, improving clarity, and doing the basics properly. Alt text fits neatly into that category.
Small job. Useful result. No cape required.
Can We Help?
Many people end up on our blog because their SEO isn't working the way they hoped, and they are trying to figure out what to do next. Sound familiar?
If your images are missing alt text, there is a fair chance other small but useful SEO jobs are being missed, too.
The good news is that these are often fixable without a rebuild, a drama, or a three-hour wrestle with your CMS.
