Freqo Compass · Guide
Images without alternative text
Alternative text (the alt attribute) describes an image to people who cannot see it, and to search engines. It takes a few seconds to write and is often forgotten.
Why it matters
- Screen readers read the alternative text aloud to blind and visually impaired visitors. Without it, they only hear “image”, or the file name.
- Search engines cannot see your images: they rely on the alternative text and the text around the image to understand them, including for image search.
- If an image fails to load, the browser shows its alternative text instead.
How to find them
Most site builders and CMSs show an “alternative text” field next to each image: check that it is filled in. Freqo Compass reads every page of your site each week and lists the images that have no alternative text, page by page.
How to fix them
- Describe what the image shows, in one short sentence, as you would to someone on the phone.
- Say what matters for the page: on a product page, the product, its colour, its model.
- If an image is a link or a button, describe where it leads or what it does, not what it looks like.
- Purely decorative images (borders, background patterns) should have an empty alternative text (alt=""), so that screen readers skip them.
- Do not stuff keywords: write for the person who will hear the text.
What Freqo Compass checks
- Images without alternative text, with the page that contains them
This is one of the 39 checks Freqo Compass runs on your site every week, each with an explanation of how to fix it. Discover Freqo Compass
Other guides
- Broken links and 404 errors
- Page titles and meta descriptions
- Real page speed (Core Web Vitals)
- Sitemap and robots.txt
- Canonical tags
- HTTPS, www and redirects
- hreflang and page language
No tool can guarantee a position in search results, and neither do we.