Was ist Alt Text?
Kurzdefinition
Alt-Text (Alternativtext) ist eine schriftliche Beschreibung eines Bildes auf Websites, die Suchmaschinen hilft, Bilder zu verstehen, und die Barrierefreiheit verbessert.
Alt text serves two critical purposes: web accessibility and SEO. For visually impaired users who rely on screen readers, alt text provides a verbal description of images they cannot see. For search engines that cannot "see" images either, alt text explains what an image depicts, helping it appear in image search results.
Writing good alt text is both an art and a science. It should be descriptive but concise (typically 125 characters or less), include relevant keywords naturally (not stuffed), and accurately describe what the image shows. Decorative images that don't convey information can have empty alt attributes (alt="") so screen readers skip them.
Alt text is also what displays when an image fails to load, giving users context about what they're missing. This fallback function makes it important for user experience even beyond accessibility and SEO.
For e-commerce sites, product image alt text is especially valuable — it helps product images appear in Google Image Search, which drives significant shopping traffic. Descriptive, keyword-rich alt text on product photos can be a meaningful source of organic traffic.
Warum es wichtig ist
Alt text is one of the easiest SEO wins most websites overlook. Google Images drives billions of searches daily, and proper alt text is the primary way to get your images found. Beyond SEO, alt text is a legal accessibility requirement in many jurisdictions — websites that don't provide it may violate ADA compliance standards.
For content-heavy sites, adding descriptive alt text to every image creates hundreds of additional ranking opportunities without creating new content.
Praxisbeispiele
A food blog added descriptive alt text to 500 recipe photos and saw Google Images traffic increase by 40% within two months
An e-commerce store wrote unique alt text for 2,000 product images instead of using file names, leading to a 15% increase in organic product page visits
A real estate agency described each property photo with location, features, and room type, capturing searches like 'modern kitchen in Austin TX'
A nonprofit improved their website's WCAG compliance score from 62% to 94% simply by adding proper alt text to all images
Verwandte Begriffe
On-Page SEO
On-Page-SEO umfasst die Optimierung einzelner Webseiten — Inhalte, HTML-Code und interne Links — um in Suchmaschinen höher zu ranken.
Technical SEO
Technisches SEO bezeichnet die Optimierung der Website-Infrastruktur, damit Suchmaschinen Ihre Seiten effizient crawlen, indexieren und rendern können.
SERP (Search Engine Results Page)
Eine SERP ist die Seite, die eine Suchmaschine als Antwort auf eine Anfrage anzeigt und organische Ergebnisse, bezahlte Anzeigen und Featured Snippets enthält.
Meta Tags
Meta-Tags sind HTML-Code-Snippets, die Suchmaschinen und Nutzern Informationen über eine Webseite liefern, einschließlich Titel, Beschreibung und Keywords.
Benötigen Sie Hilfe mit alt text?
Unser Team hilft Ihnen, dieses Konzept in die Praxis umzusetzen. Fordern Sie eine kostenlose Beratung an, um Ihr Projekt zu besprechen.