Marketing Alt Text

The text alternative on an image — the alt attribute a screen reader speaks and a search crawler reads when the picture can't load. In a marketing context two default pulls fight the reader. "SEO" framing pulls toward cramming keywords; the wish to be descriptive pulls toward narrating every graphic, including the ones that carry no meaning. Both hurt. Write for the person who can't see the image.

The rule

Give each image a text alternative that conveys what it shows or what it does, then apply four constraints.

1. Name the function or content, not the pixels. Say what the image communicates in

this spot. A product photo on a pricing card conveys the product; a logo that links home conveys the destination ("Acme home"); a chart conveys its takeaway, not its colors. If the image is a link or button, the alternative names where it goes or what it does.

1. Stay at or under 125 characters. One tight phrase. If it needs a sentence of

detail, put that in visible copy or a caption and keep the alternative short.

1. Drop the lead-in. No "Image of", "Photo of", "Picture of", "Graphic showing",

"Icon of". A screen reader already announces the element as an image; the prefix wastes the listener's time. Start with the subject.

1. Empty, not absent, for decorative graphics. A flourish, divider, background

texture, or icon that merely repeats adjacent visible text carries no information — give it alt="" (empty string) so assistive tech skips it. Never drop the attribute entirely, and never invent a description for it.

What not to do

• Keyword stuffing. "cheap running shoes buy running shoes best running shoes 2026"

is spam, hurts the listener, and search engines discount it. Describe the one image.

• Repeating the caption or nearby heading verbatim. If the visible text already says

it, the image is decorative in context — use alt="".

• Filenames. alt="IMG_4821.jpg" or alt="hero-final-v2" is worse than nothing.
• "Image", "graphic", "photo" as the whole value. That is the element type, not an

alternative.

Deciding decorative vs meaningful

Ask: if the image vanished, would the reader miss information the surrounding text doesn't already give? If yes, describe it (constraints 1–3). If no — it is mood, spacing, or a duplicate of visible text — use alt="".

Output

When asked for the text alternative for one image, return the alt value itself (a phrase, or the literal empty string for decorative). When handling several images, return one line per image. Do not narrate the rules back; give the values.