Google’s John Mueller shared Jeffrey Zeldman’s Bluesky post reminding publishers and SEOs of proper alt text usage, including a link to the W3C decision tree for guidance. The most important takeaway is that the decision process for alt text is not primarily an SEO decision.
The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is an international standards making body for the Internet. A lot of the guidance that Google provides about how Googlebot crawls HTML and treats server response codes are based on the web standards developed by the W3C, so it’s always a good idea to go straight to the source to understand exactly how to deploy HTML (like alt text) because doing it the right way will very likely align with the same standards that Google is using.
A decision tree is basically a decision making tool or diagram that asks a yes or no question. If the answer is “no” then the tree leads to another branch. Answering “yes” leads to a node that advises on what to do. The purpose of the W3C Alt Text decision tree is to guide publishers and SEOs on the proper use of alt text, which is for accessibility.
The decision tree that Zeldman linked to has five questions:
- Does the image contain text?
- Is the image used in a link or a button, and would it be hard or impossible to understand what the link or the button does, if the image wasn’t there?
- Does the image contribute meaning to the current page or context?
- Is the image purely decorative or not intended for users?
- Is the image’s use not listed above or it’s unclear what alt text to provide?
Google’s John Mueller Affirms Proper Use Of Alt Text
John Mueller did a repost on Bluesky with the additional insight that the decision making process for alt text is not “primarily” an SEO decision, meaning that accessibility should be the first consideration when deciding how to use alt text.
This is what John Mueller said about alt text:
“The choice of ALT text is not primarily an SEO decision.
If you like working with structured processes, check out, bookmark, share, and use this decision tree of when & what to use as ALT text, when it comes to accessibility.”
Zeldman’s post praised the simplicity of the decision tree:
“So straightforward, so good. An ALT text decision tree. “
Someone else posted a link to an interactive version of the decision tree called the “Alt text decide-o-matic” which is a different way to interact with the decision tree.
Check out the W3C Alt text decision tree here or try the decide-o-matic to become better acquainted with alt text best practices and become a better SEO and publisher in the process.
Related: Google Shows How To Use Alt Text For SEO
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Master1305
