Vad är Alt Text?
Snabbdefinition
Alt-text (alternativ text) är en skriven beskrivning av en bild som används på webbplatser och hjälper sökmotorer förstå bilder samt förbättrar tillgängligheten.
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.
Varför det spelar roll
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.
Verkliga exempel
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
Relaterade termer
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO innebär att optimera enskilda webbsidor — innehåll, HTML-kod och interna länkar — för att ranka högre i sökmotorer.
Technical SEO
Teknisk SEO är processen att optimera webbplatsens infrastruktur så att sökmotorer effektivt kan crawla, indexera och rendera dina sidor.
SERP (Search Engine Results Page)
En SERP är sidan som en sökmotor visar som svar på en sökning, med organiska resultat, betalda annonser, featured snippets och annat innehåll.
Meta Tags
Meta-taggar är HTML-kodfragment som ger sökmotorer och användare information om en webbsida, inklusive titel, beskrivning och nyckelord.
Behöver du hjälp med alt text?
Vårt team kan hjälpa dig att tillämpa detta koncept i praktiken. Boka en kostnadsfri konsultation för att diskutera ditt projekt.