How to Fix Missing Image Alt Tags

The fix, step by step

1. 1

   Run a crawl to list every image with no alt

   Screaming Frog (free up to 500 URLs) and Sitebulb both flag empty alt attributes. Export the list and sort by page traffic. Fix high-traffic pages first — that's where the click-through-rate impact shows up first.

2. 2

   Mark decorative images with alt=""

   Icons, dividers, and background flourishes don't carry meaning. Use an explicit empty alt — alt="" — so screen readers skip them. Don't omit the attribute and don't write "decorative image". Both confuse the screen reader.

3. 3

   Write meaningful alt for content images

   Describe what the image actually shows. A product photo: "Blue running shoe with mesh upper." A chart: "US food truck count grew from 4,000 in 2014 to 35,000 in 2024." Skip "image of" or "picture of" — Google strips those.

4. 4

   Make alt-text required at upload time

   Most missed alt tags come from CMS uploads where the field is optional. Make the alt-text input required on every upload form. New images can't ship without it, so the problem stops growing while you backfill the old ones.

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