Using different Alt Text, for the same image shown, multiple times on my site

Hello,

We have 1 image in our asset library that’s used 5 different times on our website (so, it’s the same image). I’m wondering what’s better for SEO purposes:

  1. The same alt text for the same image, on 5 different pages (or “use alt text from asset”)

  2. Unique alt text for the same image, for 5 different pages (or “custom description”) for each image.

Thank you!

Jamie

Option 2 if you think spamming will win. Option 1 if you don’t like penalties.

Is this really spamming and penalty worthy? I thought it would help. What if context is related to the page? Or more can be said on another page? Picture is worth 1000 words but the ideal character count is 150 :thinking:.
For the visually impaired, it can include beneficial description text for a screen reader or at least be a little less bland vs hearing the same text. Honest question because I’m not sure what the penalties are with images. Weird there’s a custom description field in Webflow.

I’ll take your word for it. I figured as the picture would described in different ways that pertains to the page it’s on, Option 2 would be ideal. But, I don’t like penalties, so we’ll keep it to “use alt text from asset”. Thanks!

Just remember that Google is seeing the same image asset and so is your visitor. An alt text description is there to simply describe the image for accessibility. If the image is the same why would the description be different? You would probably have to get real spammy to pull a penalty and it would probably be influenced by other on-page factors. So I would not put too much into it.

Since Google controls 95% +/~ of search I always think it is best to read what they say about a particular topic.

Alt text (text that describes an image) improves accessibility for people who can’t see images on web pages, including users who use screen readers or have low-bandwidth connections.
Google uses alt text along with computer vision algorithms and the contents of the page to understand the subject matter of the image. Also, alt text in images is useful as anchor text if you decide to use an image as a link.
When writing alt text, focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and is in context of the content of the page. Avoid filling alt attributes with keywords (also known as keyword stuffing) as it results in a negative user experience and may cause your site to be seen as spam.

Here is the official Google guidance on images → https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/google-images

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