Alt text is very important for SEO and accessibility. 

It tells search engines what your images are about, makes your site more user-friendly for everyone, and helps you stick to best practices. But let’s be real—if your website is big, keeping track of all the images without alt text can feel like a nightmare. 

That’s where Screaming Frog SEO Spider comes in. It’s a great tool that makes it easy to find images missing alt text, so you can fix them quickly and without the hassle.

Here’s an example of what image alt text looks like in HTML:

<img src="example.jpg" alt="Classic ankle boots - cognac">

Below is a screenshot of how this alt text appears when you view it on a website using a web developer extension. Simply go to the Web Developer Extension in your browser, select Images > Display Alt Attributes, and you’ll see the alt text displayed directly on top of the image, like in this example: 

If you have a small website, you can manually identify images missing alt text by simply going through each page using Web Developer Extension and checking images for alt text. In this tool, you can choose to display alt attributes or outline images without alt attributes: 

However, if you have a larger website, manually checking each page can become time-consuming. 

This is where Screaming Frog comes in handy. It allows you to quickly identify missing alt text across all pages on your site, making the process much faster and more efficient.

Three steps to find all images missing alt text. 

1. Crawl Your Website

Download and install Screaming Frog SEO Spider. ( By the way, the free version allows you to crawl up to 500 URLs) 

Once installed, open the tool and enter the URL of the website you want to analyze.

2. After the crawl has been completed, click on the ‘Images’ tab at the top. This will display a list of all the images found on your site. Filter for Missing Alt Text or Missing Alt Attributes. The first includes images where the alt text is empty or contains only whitespaces. (example: <img src=”image-logo.jpg” alt=””/>Second (Missing Alt Attributes) includes images that don’t have an alt attribute at all (<imgsrc=”image-logo.jpg”/> ) Choose what is best for you! 

3. Bulk Export Missing Alt Text

Go to Bulk Export > Images > Images Missing Alt Attribute & Text. This will generate a file showing all the images that are missing alt attributes or text: 

And that’s it! See, wasn’t that easy? 

Give it a go, and if you need any help along the way, we’re here to help.