What alt text should you write for nature images? – Cheap Nature Images

Alt text is the description a screen reader announces in place of an image. It is an accessibility requirement first and an SEO benefit second, and writing it for the second reason is how it ends up useless for the first.

Write what is in the picture

Describe the image to someone who cannot see it, in the context of the page it sits on.

Good: "Mist filling a steep wooded valley at sunrise, with a river visible on the floor."

Bad: "nature images". Bad: "IMG_4471". Bad: "cheap nature images stock photo download high resolution", which is keyword stuffing and is both unhelpful and a spam signal.

Context decides the description

The same photograph needs different alt text on different pages. On an article about river ecosystems, mention the river. On a page about morning fog, mention the fog. The question is always what the image contributes here, not what is technically visible in it.

Length

One sentence is usually right. If you find yourself writing three, the detail probably belongs in a visible caption, where sighted readers can benefit from it too.

When to leave it empty

If an image is purely decorative and adds no information, give it an empty alt attribute. That tells assistive technology to skip it, which is the correct outcome.

Omitting the attribute entirely is not the same thing and is not acceptable: a screen reader may then read out the file name.

Alt text is not a caption

A caption is visible to everyone and can add information the picture does not contain, such as a place name or a date. Alt text describes the picture. Duplicating one into the other wastes both.

If you use a caption, the alt text can be shorter, because the caption is already announced.

Where to start

Every image page here carries a description written in plain language. It is a serviceable starting point for alt text, and you are welcome to take it and adapt it to your page. Do not paste it unmodified across twenty pages; the whole value is in the context.

Linked images

When an image is a link, the alt text becomes the link text. Describe the destination rather than the picture in that case, since that is what a screen reader user needs.

Does alt text help search rankings

A little, honestly. Google states that it uses the alt attribute as anchor text when an image is a link, and it uses alt text to understand image content for image search.

That is a real benefit and it is a secondary one. Alt text written to rank reads badly to the person it exists for, and keyword stuffing in alt attributes is explicitly a spam signal. Write it for the reader; the search benefit follows from an accurate description anyway.