As businesses continue to emphasize web accessibility and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), alt text—a brief description that accompanies images—has become a critical tool. Alt text not only ensures accessibility for visually impaired users but also helps search engines index images, which boosts SEO performance. For businesses managing large product catalogs, generating descriptive and accurate alt text for thousands of images is a daunting task. This challenge often leads to common mistakes that hinder both accessibility and SEO. In this article, we’ll explore these challenges and show how AI-powered solutions like A11y Alt can help businesses avoid these pitfalls.

The Challenges of Managing Alt Text for Large Product Catalogs

Businesses with extensive product offerings, such as e-commerce retailers and manufacturers, often manage thousands or even millions of product images. Each image requires a unique, relevant alt text description. This process is labor-intensive, and even teams dedicated to accessibility and SEO struggle to keep up. The sheer volume of images can lead to inconsistent practices, and common mistakes in alt text often follow, reducing both accessibility and SEO performance.

Common Alt Text Mistakes

1. Repetitive Alt Text Across Images

A common mistake in large product catalogs is using repetitive alt text for similar images. For example, a shoe retailer might describe all black shoes as “black shoe,” ignoring differences in brand, design, or features. This not only fails to provide valuable information for users who rely on screen readers but also signals to search engines that the content lacks uniqueness. Search engines prioritize distinct content, so repetitive alt text can result in diminished SEO performance.

2. Missing Alt Text

Another frequent issue, particularly in large catalogs, is missing alt text. When images lack alt text, users with visual impairments are unable to understand the context or details of the image, which undermines accessibility standards. Additionally, search engines miss out on indexing these images, leading to reduced visibility in search results.

3. Generic Placeholders

Some businesses resort to placeholder alt text like “image” or “photo” when they don’t have resources to create meaningful descriptions. While this might seem like a quick solution, it adds no value for either users or search engines. Placeholder alt text detracts from a website’s overall accessibility and SEO potential.

4. Overly Detailed or Irrelevant Descriptions

Alt text should be concise and focused on describing the image. However, some businesses make the mistake of writing lengthy alt text that includes unnecessary details, which can overwhelm users who rely on screen readers. This practice also confuses search engines by diluting the main content focus. Irrelevant descriptions, where the alt text doesn't accurately reflect the image, can further weaken the site’s SEO.

Why These Mistakes Matter

Mistakes in alt text impact both accessibility and SEO. Poor alt text practices prevent individuals with visual impairments from fully engaging with web content, limiting inclusivity. In terms of SEO, search engines use alt text to understand and rank images. Without proper alt text, businesses miss opportunities for increased search visibility, potentially resulting in lost traffic and business opportunities. With accessibility and SEO becoming increasingly intertwined, businesses can’t afford to make these mistakes​.

Case Study: Alt Text Issues in a Large Product Catalog

Amazon, the world’s largest e-commerce platform, faced similar alt text challenges. With millions of product images, the company initially struggled with incomplete or repetitive alt text, hindering accessibility and SEO. To address this, Amazon deployed AI-powered tools to automate alt text generation for its vast product catalog. The AI analyzes image content and related product details to create specific descriptions like “slim-fit blue jeans with distressed knees,” providing more valuable information for both users and search engines.. This approach allowed Amazon to improve accessibility and boost its search engine visibility while handling a large volume of images efficiently..

How AI Solutions Address These Mistakes

For businesses with large product catalogs, AI-powered alt text generation tools such as A11y Alt are an effective solution to avoid common mistakes. These tools are designed to handle large-scale image management by delivering accurate and relevant alt text quickly and efficiently.

Scalability

AI solutions automatically generate descriptive alt text for thousands of images simultaneously. This ensures that no image is left without a description, solving the issue of missing alt text and scaling up accessibility efforts without human intervention.

Unique Descriptions

AI tools generate unique descriptions for each image, preventing the repetition of alt text across similar images. For example, our tool describes two similar pairs of earrings differently, such as “bridal pink porcelain post rose small earring” and “jewelry carnelian red cameo pendant purple bengaline choker necklace” thereby enhancing both accessibility and SEO.

Filling Gaps

AI can detect missing alt text and automatically generate appropriate descriptions for images that lack them. This feature is particularly valuable during updates when new products are added to a catalog, ensuring that no image is left behind.

Concise and Relevant Descriptions

AI ensures that alt text remains concise and focused on the image’s most important features. This prevents the problem of overly lengthy or irrelevant descriptions while improving user engagement and optimizing the site for search engine algorithms​.

Conclusion: Adopting AI for Better Alt Text Management

In a digital world where accessibility and SEO are intertwined, businesses can no longer afford to ignore the importance of alt text. Managing alt text manually for large product catalogs is unsustainable and fraught with mistakes like repetitive descriptions, missing text, and generic placeholders. A11y Alt offers a scalable and efficient solution to these challenges.

By adopting AI-driven alt text generation, businesses can ensure that every image is accurately described, improving both accessibility and search engine visibility. For companies looking to enhance both user experience and SEO performance, investing in AI-powered alt text generation is a practical and powerful solution. AI tools can handle the scale and complexity of large product catalogs, making websites more accessible and helping them rank higher in search engine results.

In today’s competitive online marketplace, where user inclusivity and SEO optimization are essential for success, businesses can benefit from leveraging AI to optimize their alt text strategy. By doing so, they not only increase their search visibility but also ensure that their websites are accessible to all users.