Alt Text (Alternative Text).

Alt text is the alt attribute inside an <img> tag, and it describes in words what an image shows. Its most important purpose is accessibility: screen readers read the text aloud to blind and partially sighted users so they can follow the content instead of hitting a silent gap. If an image fails to load — a broken path, a slow connection, a blocked host — the browser displays the alt text in its place. That makes it a genuine fallback layer, not decoration.

For SEO, alt text is the main signal Google uses to work out what an image contains. That is the basis for rankings in Google Images, a traffic channel many Swiss businesses still ignore. Good alt text is specific and descriptive: 'Woman jogging along Lake Zurich at sunrise' rather than 'image' or 'IMG_2043'. The description should also fit the surrounding context, because the same photograph can be relevant for very different reasons on different pages.

Sound practice comes down to a handful of habits. Keep it short and precise, usually under 125 characters. Work the relevant keyword in naturally instead of stacking terms, because keyword stuffing in alt attributes helps nobody and can look manipulative. Give purely decorative images an empty alt='' so screen readers skip them. And if an image contains text, carry the meaning of that text into the alt attribute — otherwise it is simply lost for anyone who cannot see it.

A practical example: a Swiss trades business that labels every reference photo with something like 'Renovated period kitchen with oak parquet in Winterthur' achieves two things at once. The gallery becomes usable for visitors with a screen reader, and the same images become findable in Google Images for local searches about kitchen renovations. Neither result required extra photography — only a few seconds of thought per file at upload time.