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§ 2.5.1 ARTICLE

Image SEO · alt text

Squarespace image alt text

Squarespace renders the Image Block's Description field as the rendered img tag's alt attribute on the published page1. The Image Title field is a separate concept — it appears as the title attribute (a hover tooltip) but does not appear in alt. Mixing them up is the most common reason 'my alt text is not working' on Squarespace. Good alt text is descriptive, accurate, 60-125 characters, and reads naturally.

This page covers where alt text lives on every Squarespace block type (Image Block, Gallery Block, Product Image), what to write for the three common image roles (hero, product, editorial), and the three reasons alt text sometimes does not render.

What alt text is (and what it is not)

Alt text is the value of the HTML alt attribute on an img tag. It serves three audiences: screen-reader users who cannot see the image, search-engine crawlers that cannot reliably interpret image content, and AI engines like Gemini that use it as a signal alongside their own multimodal vision. Alt text is not the same as the image caption (which is visible to all users) or the image title (which appears as a hover tooltip). On Squarespace, those three fields live in different UI controls and produce different output.

Google's documentation2 describes alt text as the primary signal for understanding image content, especially when the image-recognition layer is uncertain. W3C's accessibility guidance3 frames it as the functional equivalent of the image for users who cannot see it. Both perspectives converge: alt text describes what the image conveys, not what the image literally is.

The three alt-text fields on Squarespace

Description

the field that renders as the img tag's alt attribute. The SEO and accessibility field.

Squarespace Help · 2026-Q1
Image Title

renders as the title attribute (hover tooltip). Does NOT appear in alt. Common confusion.

Squarespace Help · 2026-Q1
60-125 ch

the sweet-spot length for alt text. Descriptive enough to be useful, short enough to scan.

Google Search Central · 2026-Q1

Where Squarespace stores alt text on each block type

Three Squarespace block types display images, and each has a slightly different UI for alt text. Image Block uses the Description field. Gallery Block uses a per-image Caption/Description workflow. Product Images in Commerce use the SEO panel on the product. The render target is the same — Squarespace puts the value into the img tag's alt attribute on the published page — but the UI you click through to reach the field differs. This is the most common reason a Squarespace owner thinks they have added alt text and it does not appear: the field they filled in is the wrong one for the block type.

01. Image Block — Description field

The standard Image Block has two text fields in the Image Information section. The first, Image Title, is the title attribute. The second, Description, is the alt attribute. Fill in Description. Leave Image Title empty unless you specifically want a hover tooltip — many sites leave it blank to avoid the noisy tooltip behaviour, which is fine for SEO.

HTML The HTML Squarespace renders from the Image Block fields 
 <!-- Input in editor: --> <!-- Image Title:   "Kitchen Renovation Hero"  --> <!-- Description:   "Modernised kitchen with marble countertops and walnut cabinetry" --> <!-- Squarespace renders: --> <img src="https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/.../kitchen.jpg" alt="Modernised kitchen with marble countertops and walnut cabinetry" title="Kitchen Renovation Hero">

Gallery Sections (on Squarespace 7.1 templates) and the older Gallery Block both support per-image alt text via the same Description field, but the path is different — you open each image in the gallery editor, click the settings cog or the info icon, and fill in the Description field there. The downside: there is no bulk-edit UI for galleries. The upside: every image in a gallery can have unique alt text, which is what Google and Gemini want.

For galleries with 20+ images, the workflow gets repetitive. The bulk alt-text leaf covers the realistic shortcuts — including the case for accepting good-enough patterned alt text on similar gallery images rather than writing unique copy for every one.

03. Product Images — Commerce flow

Squarespace Commerce product images use a different UI. Open the product, click the image, and the alt-text field is under SEO Description or Image Alt Text depending on your panel version. Squarespace renders it as the img tag's alt attribute on the public product page and in the auto-generated product image sitemap. For ecommerce sites, product image alt text is one of the highest-leverage SEO interventions because product images drive Google Shopping and Image search traffic disproportionately.

What to actually write

Three patterns cover most cases on a Squarespace site. (1) Hero images — describe the subject and the visual mood that supports the brand message: 'Modernised kitchen with marble countertops and walnut cabinetry' beats 'kitchen image'. (2) Product images — describe the product specifically and mention any text visible on the image: 'Brass pendant light with linen shade, side view' beats 'pendant'. (3) Editorial images — describe what the image shows and why it is in the article: 'Bar chart showing Squarespace site traffic up 47% after redirect rollout' beats 'chart'.

Length: 60-125 characters is the sweet spot per Google's documentation2. Shorter works for simple images; longer is acceptable when the image contains specific text or detail that matters. Avoid 'image of', 'picture of', 'photo of' — screen readers already announce the element as an image, and the prefix wastes characters that could describe the content.

Decorative images — purely visual flourishes that add nothing to the content — should have empty alt text (alt=""), which screen readers skip. On Squarespace 7.1, leaving the Description field blank produces an empty alt attribute, which is correct for decorative use cases3.

Common mistakes that break alt text

Three mistakes break alt text in different ways. (1) Filling in Image Title instead of Description — the most common one. The text appears as a tooltip but not in alt. (2) Keyword stuffing — repeating the target keyword multiple times in the alt text. Google's documentation explicitly flags this as a quality signal that backfires. (3) Generic patterns repeated across many images — 'kitchen design' on every kitchen photo. Each image should have unique alt text that describes that specific image, not the page topic.

Why alt text isn't actually working — three real reasons

When a Squarespace owner says alt text 'is not working', three causes account for nearly every case. (1) The text was filled into Image Title instead of Description, so it renders as a tooltip rather than the alt attribute. (2) The image is loaded via CSS background-image in Custom CSS — CSS backgrounds have no alt attribute, so there is nowhere for the text to render. (3) The text was added in the editor but the page was not saved or republished — the published HTML still shows the old empty alt. Each has a one-step fix.

The verification check is fast: right-click the published image, choose Inspect Element, and look at the rendered <img> tag in the DevTools panel. If the alt attribute is empty, you are in case (3) — the change has not been saved. If there is no img tag at all and the image is a CSS background, you are in case (2) — the image needs to be in an Image Block, not a CSS background. If the alt attribute has the wrong text, you are in case (1) — you filled in Image Title instead of Description.

For AI-search visibility, the same alt text that supports Google Images also supports Gemini's multimodal reading4. The Pillar 1 Gemini multimodal cluster covers the AI angle in detail. The discipline is the same: write alt text that describes the image accurately, do not keyword-stuff, and do not skip it.

Keep reading · § 2.5