Aside from local regulations and maybe large businesses that require site images to include alt text, for a small business or individual site, is alt text still recommended to maximize SEO and accessibility even when the page is rich with textual content?
For example, let’s say there’s a blog site with posts that are well-optimized with helpful, descriptive content. The author sprinkles a few images to spice up the post with visual representations of some key concepts as well as for design/aesthetic purposes.
I understand that the images purely for design/aesthetic purposes usually won’t need alt text, but what about the other images that are visual representations of the content that is already well-written and explained in the post via text?
It probably wouldn’t hurt to add a short description to each image, but wouldn’t that be unnecessary effort if the image is already well-described in the post itself? For instance, from a user experience/accessibility perspective, wouldn’t it be better to not have the screen reader repeat the same thing twice (once in the text, and again in the image)?
Wouldn’t it be better and easier to make sure that the text already contains the gist of what the image represents, and the image itself is more of a “flair” to spice things up on the page so that users aren’t merely reading a huge wall of text?
Most (including Google) seem to emphasize the importance of adding alt text for SEO and accessibility, but I’m just wondering if I’m missing something here or if there are any further benefits to going through the trouble of adding alt text if the textual content is already rich and well-optimized.
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Used to stress over alt texts in the past. WordPress recommends skipping the alt text if the image is decorative, so that’s what I do now. I write a how-to blog with lots of screenshots, but everything in the screenshots is already described in the text.
Yes, alt text serves a specific purpose necessary for seo and accessibility (eg screen readers).
The text content on your pages is not related to your images.
Imagine a person who can’t see the image. Their screen reader says there is an image but doesn’t say what it is. You may know that it matches the text, but they will not.
Alt-text is still very important.
You can always test and find out. Everything I’ve heard is that it is best to always use Alt text. I teach my students to always use it. But these lessons are based on best practices and reports from other experts.
In the end, you may test and find that is makes no difference for you.
The trick is to find a solid and fair test that will give you results you can trust.
If you’re comfortable not included it, you could try and see what happens.
I had a client who accidentally tried it a few years ago. I’d taught him to always use Alt text, but he came up with a creative method of entering it that didn’t actually work. As I wasn’t checking every post, I missed his altered approach.
When he’s traffic dropped, he eventually paid for an SEO audit from another company. #1 thing they pointed out was the lack of alt text. We went over what had happened and got it fixed.
Did that cause his traffic improvement? Or was it the advanced cache they also recommended? Impossible for me to know.
SEO is a rapidly changing field, and I’m far from an expert. Will that lack of alt text be a missed opportunity to reinforce your content? Or will it just make the content smoother for a screen reader? I don’t know.
I’m just going with my experience and what I’ve learned over the years, and I’d be nervous leaving that out.
But times change and your mileage may vary.
Have you run your content past someone who is actively using a screen reader? Have they given you feedback that the Alt text is unnecessary? It has been a few years since I did, but I remember being told that it was extremely useful and something they appreciated.
I’ve also heard that search engines may use headings and alt text as higher level signals than just the text of a post. I don’t know how accurate it is, but experientially it certainly seems to be the case.
SEO often seems like a black box. Things may not always be as they seem, so I understand questioning even best practices. I’m not sure you’ll find a hard answer other than experiments and experiences.
I wish you much success!