AI How AI-Generated Alt Text Helps You Win the SEO Game

Alt Text Beyond Accessibility

Alt text (alternative text) is the short descriptive text attached to images that tells search engines and screen readers what the image contains.  It’s not just a best practice but a legal requirement in Europe under the European Accessibility Act. In fact, companies that violate the EAA have between 30 and 90 days to fix issues once a violation notice is served (depending on the country). Several countries outside of Europe have similar legal requirements under their own accessibility compliance laws. 

The truth is, without alt text, you're not only breaking the law or excluding users who rely on screen readers. A lack of alt text means search engines see your photos, infographics, and other images as nothing more than unnamed files. With alt text, those same images become powerful SEO assets that can drive traffic, improve rankings, and help search engines understand your content.

While creating high-quality alt text manually can feel tedious, AI can now do the job for you, making alt text implementation faster, smarter, and more scalable than ever.

Turning Images into Search Assets

In a digital landscape where visibility is everything, every image on your site has the potential to attract, convert, or inform. With the right alt text (backed by the right AI tool), you’re not just correctly describing your visuals but also amplifying your discoverability.

The Real SEO Power of Alt Text

Alt text is the bridge between your visual content and search engine understanding and plays a direct role in how search engines index your website. It gives context to images, helping crawlers understand what each visual element represents. When alt text aligns with your page content and target keywords, it helps your images show up in image search results and strengthens how search engines interpret the intent and theme of your entire webpage.

To summarize, good alt text adds value to your pages. It helps search engines:

1. Rank your pages for more keywords 
   An e-commerce site selling furniture might have a product image. Without alt text, Google only knows there's an image file named "IMG_3847.jpg." With alt text like "modern walnut chest of drawers with brass handles and tapered legs," search engines now understand the style, material and features, connecting it to dozens of relevant searches.
   
   
2. Better understand the content and intent of a page 
   A landing page about "sustainable hiking gear" becomes more topically cohesive when image alt text references "recycled polyester backpack," "waterproof and insulated hiking boots," and "solar-powered camping equipment" rather than generic descriptions like "backpack" or "boots."
   
   
3. Serve relevant image results 
   Search engines drive substantial traffic, especially for visual categories like fashion, home decor, recipes, and travel. Images with descriptive alt text are more likely to appear in image search results, making your products and pages more discoverable.

The AI Advantage

Writing unique, keyword-aligned alt text manually for thousands of product images is time-consuming and exhausting but also prone to error. Additionally, it can be difficult to maintain consistency, quality, and keyword relevance across large catalogs and multiple languages.

Lately, AI models have started to surface that automatically analyze images, product data, and page context and generate alt text that’s not only accurate but also keyword-rich and search-optimized. This has been a game-changer for companies, as it both frees up resources and eliminates guesswork. AI-generated alt text is:

1. Accurate and descriptive
2. Enriched with SEO-relevant keywords
3. Scalable across languages and markets (it can generate alt text in Swedish, Norwegian, English, or any target-market language) 
4. Consistent across your site

AI-Powered Alt Text: What to Expect

When you have strong AI-generated alt text in place that is consistent, relevant and well-written, it not only improves clarity across your site but unlocks several SEO benefits:

1. Higher overall rankings for image-rich content: Alt text helps your images surface in search results and improves the overall relevance of your product pages.
2. More entry points via visual and contextual discovery: Shoppers often discover products through visuals first. Search-optimized alt text makes your imagery visible at these crucial discovery stages and helps search engines better understand what you sell and who it’s for.
3. Improved crawlability and semantic understanding: Clear, consistent alt text helps search engines map how your products or content connect, boosting the value of category pages and site structure.
4. Enhanced user experience (UX): Better UX leads to lower bounce rates, which indirectly supports search performance.
5. Increased impressions and traffic: Optimized alt text broadens your visibility in search results, driving more qualified visitors to your site over time.

Bulk-Generate Alt Text with Avensia

At Avensia, we’ve developed an AI-powered alt text solution that automates descriptions and elevates performance across SEO, scalability, and accessibility compliance.

Our solution intelligently generates alt text for your product and media images, tuned to your brand’s language and your market’s needs. It can process thousands of images in bulk and generate descriptions automatically for any new content added.

Aside from automating alt text in bulk, Avensia’s solution:

• Detects new or updated images and adds alt text automatically
• Chooses the AI model that fits accuracy, costs or data-residency needs
• Pulls brand, material, size, and other attributes straight from the PIM
• Guarantees every alt text meets WCAG and EAA standards
• Avoids storing images permanently
  
  

Regardless of whether you’re managing a B2C storefront or a B2B platform, it ensures your visual content is always search-ready. If your brand is ready to take the next step in content performance, SEO visibility, scalable content optimization, and compliance, Avensia can help you unlock that potential starting with your visuals.

The Legal Risks of Ignoring Alt Text

Alt text is extremely beneficial for SEO, but it’s also a requirement for accessibility. Violating the EAA can result in large penalties, legal action, and reputational damage. In Sweden, for example, fines can reach up to SEK 10 million per breach. The cost of inaction can quickly exceed the investment required to implement an AI-powered accessibility solution.

Ready to see what AI-powered alt text can do for you? Book a 30-minute demo before the 31^st of March 2026, and we’ll audit 100 product images for free. Contact us here