Enhancing SEO With Alt Text Generation

In today’s digital landscape, accessibility and search engine optimization (SEO) are paramount considerations for website owners and developers. Alt text, or alternative text, plays a crucial role by providing descriptive information about images to users with visual impairments and search engines.

What is Alt Text?

Alt text are HTML elements used to describe an image’s content. It serves as a textual alternative to images and is typically used when an image fails to load or for users who rely on screen readers to navigate the web.

Importance of Alt Text

1. Accessibility: Alt text ensures that users with visual impairments can understand the content and context of images on a web page.
2. SEO: Search engines rely on alt text to understand the subject matter of images, which can improve the visibility of a web page in search results.

Best Practices for Writing Alt Text

1. Be Descriptive: Provide a clear and accurate description of the image’s content and purpose.
2. Keep it Concise: Aim for brief but informative alt text that conveys the essential information.
3. Avoid Keyword Stuffing: While including relevant keywords is essential, avoid overloading alt text with unnecessary keywords.
4. Decorative Images: For decorative images that don’t convey meaningful content, use empty alt text (alt="") to indicate to screen readers that the image can be ignored.
5. Context Matters: Consider the context of the image and its surrounding content when writing alt text.

Adding Alt Text with Imgix

Imgix recommends generating alt text with AI, backed by the Generations API. It’s available both from the Asset Manager UI and programmatically, for two ways in total.

• From the Asset Manager UI: open an asset’s detail panel and click Generate next to the Alt Text field.

  

• Directly via the API: make a synchronous GET request to /v1/generations/alt-text, identifying the image with url or url64.

Both paths support the same set of over 50 languages — see the full list of supported languages in the Generations API reference.

AI-generated alt text is metered against your account’s credits. Responses are cached, so repeat requests for the same image and language are served from the cache and don’t consume additional credits. Pass regenerate=true to bypass the cache and force a fresh, credit-consuming generation.

GET api/v1/generations/alt-text?url=https://assets.imgix.net/photo.jpg&language=en,es

See the full Alt Text Generation API reference for authentication, request parameters, and response format.

Using Alt Text in Your HTML

To use alt text, include the alt attribute within the <img> tag of an HTML page and set its value to a brief description of the image. For example:

<img
  src="/red-fox.jpeg"
  alt="A fox laying down in the snow with its eyes closed"
/>

This ensures that all users, regardless of their ability to see images, can understand the content and context of your web page.

Summary

Alt text is a fundamental component of web accessibility and SEO. Imgix recommends generating it with AI via the Generations API, available from either the Asset Manager UI or the API. By following best practices and providing descriptive alt text for images, website owners can ensure their content is accessible to all users and optimized for search engines.