SEO & Metadata
What is alt text?
A short text description of an image, set via the `alt` attribute, used by screen readers and search engines to understand what the image shows.
<img src="/logo.svg" alt="Brand.dev wordmark logo">. The alt attribute is an accessibility requirement, screen readers read it aloud, and an SEO signal, Google uses it to understand image content for image search and to interpret pages where the image carries meaning.
Good alt text describes what the image conveys in context, not literally what's in the frame. "Brand.dev wordmark logo" is better than "purple text saying Brand.dev." Decorative images (a divider line, a background pattern) should have alt="" so screen readers skip them, never omit the attribute entirely.
For programmatic content (image search, RAG pipelines, AI agents), alt text is often the only structured information available about an image. Sites that take alt seriously (Stripe, GitHub, Apple) get a meaningful boost in image-search visibility just from being thorough.
How Brand.dev uses alt text
Endpoints in the Brand.dev API where this concept comes up directly.
FAQ
When should alt text be empty?
For purely decorative images that don't add information. alt="" tells screen readers to skip; omitting alt entirely makes them read the filename, which is worse.
Does Google use alt text?
Yes, heavily for image search, and as a content signal for the page when the image is meaningful.
How long should alt text be?
Long enough to convey the image's meaning, short enough that a screen reader doesn't bog down, usually 80-150 characters.
Related terms
Scalable Vector Graphics, an XML-based image format that describes shapes mathematically, so the image is sharp at any resolution.
An HTML element in the `<head>` that supplies metadata about the page, title, description, viewport, social previews, robots directives.
A meta-tag protocol Facebook introduced in 2010 that tells social platforms how to render a link preview, title, description, image, and type.