Most sites don’t have a complete absence of alt text anymore — they have alt text that’s technically present but quietly broken in ways that undercut both accessibility and search visibility. These are the seven patterns that show up most often, what they actually cost you, and what to do instead.
For the full rules on writing alt text correctly in the first place, see how to write alt text that actually helps SEO — this post assumes you’ve got the basics and focuses on where things go wrong in practice.
1. Missing alt text entirely
Still the most common issue, even on sites that are otherwise well-optimized. It usually isn’t intentional — it’s a CMS default, a bulk image upload nobody went back to, or a developer who shipped a template without thinking about it. The cost is real: every one of those images is invisible to screen reader users and contributes nothing to image search. It’s worth hearing what that actually means in practice — Search Engine Land collected accessibility tips directly from Deaf and Disabled users, and missing alt text comes up constantly as a real, daily barrier rather than an abstract compliance issue.
2. Keyword stuffing
alt="best running shoes 2026 buy running shoes online cheap running shoes" doesn’t help anyone — not the screen reader user trying to understand the image, and not your rankings either. Search engines are well past the point of rewarding this; if anything, it reads as a manipulation signal. One natural keyword, used only if it genuinely fits, is the ceiling here.
3. Duplicate alt text across near-identical images
Classic e-commerce problem: three product images — front, back, detail shot — all carrying the exact same alt text, like “blue jacket.” A screen reader user tabbing through the page hears the same description three times with no way to tell the images apart. Each image should describe what’s actually different about that specific shot — angle, detail, context — not just the product name repeated.
4. Stale alt text after an image swap
A page gets updated, the image changes, and the alt text doesn’t. Now you’ve got an image of a redesigned product page with alt text describing the old version — actively wrong information for both screen readers and crawlers. This one’s sneaky because it doesn’t show up in a quick scan; it only surfaces when someone’s reading the alt text against the actual image. Building alt text review into your content update checklist is the only real fix.
5. Redundant phrasing
“Image of a sunset over the ocean” instead of just “Sunset over the ocean.” Screen readers already announce that an image is present before reading the description — restating it adds length without adding information, on every single image across a site. It’s a small thing individually, but it compounds across a large image library.
6. Decorative images given descriptive alt text instead of being left empty
Not every image needs a description. A background texture, a visual divider, a purely aesthetic flourish — these should carry an empty alt="", which tells screen readers to skip them entirely. Writing out “abstract blue gradient background” for an image that adds zero information just forces screen reader users to sit through noise. The instinct to describe every image is understandable, but it works against the people alt text is meant to help.
7. The same alt text reused across different contexts
The same stock photo gets used on three different pages, and someone copy-pastes the same alt text onto all three — without accounting for the fact that the image means something different on each page. A photo of a laptop on a desk might warrant alt="Laptop displaying a budget spreadsheet" on a finance page and alt="Laptop set up for remote work in a home office" on a productivity page. Alt text should describe the image’s role on that page, not just the image in isolation.
The pattern across all seven
Notice that none of these are about not knowing the rules — they’re about consistency breaking down at scale, across teams, CMS updates, and time. The fix usually isn’t writing better alt text once; it’s catching where it’s already gone wrong. If you’re working with an existing site rather than starting fresh, our guide to auditing and fixing alt text across your whole site covers exactly that process.
This post is part of a series on image SEO. Start with the overview: Are Alt Tags Important for SEO? Or continue to: How to Write Alt Text That Works · Alt Text vs. Title vs. Caption · How to Audit and Fix Alt Text