How to Fix: All images have alt text

All images have alt text is a high-priority check in the Image SEO category. Alt text is the small, unglamorous field that does two big jobs at once: it lets a blind user understand your images, and it lets Google understand them. Skip it and you are invisible on both fronts — in Google Images and to a meaningful slice of your audience.

What this check actually means

The check looks for a meaningful alt attribute on the images that carry information. A failure means images are being served with no alt at all, or with useless values — a filename like IMG_4471.jpg, or a keyword-stuffed string that reads like spam. On WordPress this is common because the media library lets you insert an image without ever touching the alt field, so it silently defaults to empty and nobody notices until a scan flags a few hundred of them.

One nuance the check respects and you should too: not every image needs alt text. Purely decorative images — a background flourish, a divider — should have an empty alt (alt=""), which tells assistive tech to skip them. The goal is not alt text on everything; it is meaningful alt text on everything meaningful, and a deliberate blank on the rest.

Why it matters for SEO

Two returns, both real. First, Google Images: alt text is a primary way Google works out what a picture shows, and for a lot of sites — recipes, products, travel, anything visual — image search is an underrated traffic source you are simply absent from without it. Second, accessibility: a screen reader reads the alt text aloud, so a well-described image is the difference between a page that makes sense to a blind user and one that is full of unexplained gaps.

For WooCommerce there is a direct commercial edge. Product images with accurate alt text surface in image search for exactly the product terms buyers use, and that is qualified traffic landing on a page built to sell. Missing alt on product images is a storefront choosing not to appear in a place customers actively shop.

How I would fix it in WordPress

Difficulty Level: EASY – This fix is straightforward and can typically be completed by anyone with basic WordPress knowledge.

Estimated Time: varies

The time is “varies” for a reason — a fresh site is a habit to build, an old site with thousands of images is a project. Handle both:

1. Fix the habit first. From now on, fill the alt field every time you add an image in the block editor or media library. Describe what the image actually shows, in a natural sentence, as if to someone who cannot see it.
2. Audit the backlog. Use an accessibility or SEO scanner to list every image missing alt text so you know the real size of the job before you start.
3. Prioritise by value: hero images, product photos, and images inside your best-performing content first. Decorative images get a deliberate alt="", not a made-up description.
4. For large catalogues, a bulk alt-text plugin can pre-fill from product titles as a starting point — but treat that as a first pass to refine, not a finished answer.
5. Write for the human, and the keyword will usually take care of itself. “Blue ceramic pour-over coffee dripper on a wooden counter” describes the image and contains the search terms naturally. Do not stuff.

The mistake I see most: describing for the robot, not the reader

Here is where alt text most often goes wrong, and it comes from good SEO intentions. Someone learns alt text “helps rankings” and starts writing it for the crawler — cramming keywords, repeating the target phrase, producing strings no human would ever say. That fails on both counts: it reads as spam to Google, and it is genuinely worse for the blind user the field exists to serve, who now hears a keyword salad instead of a description. My rule is simple and it has never let me down: write the alt text for a person who cannot see the image, describing what is actually there. Do that honestly and it satisfies the search engine as a by-product, because Google is trying to understand the same thing the reader is. Serve the human, and the machine is served too.

Recommended Tools & Plugins

These tools can help you fix and prevent this issue:

• Yoast SEO – Comprehensive SEO plugin with built-in checks
• Rank Math – Feature-rich SEO plugin with detailed analysis
• Google Search Console – Free tool to monitor your site’s search presence
• SEO Roadmap – Complete SEO audit and action plan tool

Need More Help?

If you have inherited a media library with thousands of empty alt fields, do not try to fix it in one sitting — prioritise the images that earn traffic and work down from there, and lean on a bulk tool for the long tail. For a large store, a developer can script an initial pass from product data that you then refine. A complete SEO Roadmap audit will tell you exactly how many images are affected and which pages are losing the most from it, so you spend your effort where it pays.

This guide is part of the SEO Roadmap knowledge base – your complete resource for WordPress SEO optimization.