Has Anchored Image with No Alt Text: How to Fix It

What this issue means

The "Has Anchored Image with No Alt Text" audit flags a specific, high-impact pattern: an image wrapped in an anchor tag (a clickable image link) that has no alt attribute, or an empty alt attribute, when the image is the only content inside the link. In plain HTML terms, you have something like <a href="..."><img src="..."></a> with nothing else inside the link to explain its purpose.

This is different from a normal decorative image missing alt text. Here the image is doing double duty: it is both a picture and a navigation element, so when the alt is absent the link has no readable label at all.

Why alt text on a linked image matters

A text link gives Google and assistive technology its anchor text directly from the words between the opening and closing anchor tags. A linked image has no words. The browser, the crawler, and the screen reader all fall back to the alt attribute to find out what the link represents. Remove the alt text and you remove the only descriptive content the link has.

This hurts two audiences at once. For search engines, you lose the relevance signal that anchor text normally passes to the destination page. For people using screen readers, the link becomes unusable as a meaningful choice, because the software has nothing sensible to announce.

The accessibility cost

When an image used as a link has no alternative text, screen readers have nothing to identify the link with, so the software announces the image file name or the raw destination URL instead. A user hears something like "link, IMG underscore 4821 dot jpg," which says nothing about whether the link is worth following. WCAG treats this as a failure: any time an image is the only content within a link, that image must be given alternative text that presents the function of the link. The axe rule for accessible link names and Screaming Frog's WCAG 2.0 A "links require discernible text" check both flag it as a discernible-text violation.

How Google uses image alt as anchor text

Google's own Search Central image documentation is explicit on this point: alt text is useful as anchor text if you decide to use an image as a link, and for images used as links Google uses the alt attribute of the image element as the anchor text. So the alt attribute on a linked image is not just an accessibility nicety. It is the anchor text, and anchor text is one of the ways Google understands what a destination page is about.

Google also combines alt text with computer vision and surrounding page content to understand the subject of an image. But for the linking signal, the alt attribute is the lever: leave it blank and the link contributes nothing to how Google interprets the page it points to.

How to diagnose it

Start with the URLs this audit already lists. For each one, open the page and inspect the flagged image. The pattern you are looking for is an anchor element whose only child is an image with a missing or empty alt attribute. You can confirm it by viewing the page source and searching for <a immediately followed by <img.

Tools make this faster at scale. A crawler such as Screaming Frog or Sitebulb can isolate linked images with no alt text, and a browser accessibility extension built on the axe engine will report the link-name failure directly. The distinction these tools help you draw is whether the image stands alone inside the link or sits next to descriptive text, because that changes the correct fix.

How to fix it

The rule for a functional image is simple: the alt text should describe the destination or action of the link, not the appearance of the picture. Ask yourself what a text link in this position would say, then write that as the alt text. If the image is a logo that links to the home page, the alt should convey "home," not "blue circular logo." If it is a thumbnail linking to an article, the alt should name the article or its topic.

<!-- Bad: no alt, link has no readable label -->
<a href="/pricing/">
  <img src="/img/pricing-icon.png">
</a>

<!-- Good: alt describes where the link goes -->
<a href="/pricing/">
  <img src="/img/pricing-icon.png" alt="View our pricing plans">
</a>

There is one important exception. When a link contains both an image and descriptive text, and that text already explains the link, the image should be given an empty alt attribute (alt="") so the screen reader does not announce the same thing twice. In that case the empty alt is correct, not a defect. The audit targets the situation where the image is the sole content of the link and therefore must carry the description itself.

<!-- Good: text carries the label, image is decorative -->
<a href="/blog/seo-guide/">
  <img src="/img/arrow.png" alt=""> Read the full SEO guide
</a>

Common mistakes

The first mistake is leaving the alt empty on a standalone image link because someone read that decorative images should have empty alt. That advice applies to images that are not links. A lone image inside an anchor is functional, not decorative, and needs a real description.

The second mistake is keyword stuffing. Because the alt becomes anchor text, it is tempting to cram in target keywords. Google's guidance warns against filling alt attributes with keywords, which it treats as a poor experience that can look like spam. Write a natural phrase that describes the destination, as you would for any honest anchor text.

The third mistake is describing the picture instead of the link. "Photo of a calculator" tells a user nothing about the destination. "Estimate your monthly cost" does.

FAQ