31% of Roofing Websites Have Zero Image Alt Tags

A roofing company in Orlando has 35 project photos on its website. Before-and-after shots of hurricane repairs. Drone aerials of completed re-roofs. Close-ups of damaged shingles with insurance adjuster notes. These photos are the company’s strongest selling tool — visual proof that builds trust in a way that text cannot.

Google sees none of them.

Every one of those 35 images has no alt text. No description. No context. As far as Google’s search engine is concerned, those photos don’t exist. They won’t appear in Google Image Search. They won’t contribute to the page’s relevance for searches like “hurricane roof repair Orlando.” They’re invisible.

When we audited 1,409 roofing company websites across Texas, Florida, and Georgia, 438 — 31% — had zero image alt tags across their entire site. Not one image described. Not one photo tagged. Complete alt text absence on every page.

What Alt Tags Actually Do

An image alt tag (technically the alt attribute on an HTML <img> element) is a text description of what the image shows. It serves two purposes that directly affect a roofing company’s bottom line.

Search Engine Visibility

Google cannot see photos the way humans do. It relies on the alt text to understand what an image contains. A photo with the alt text “Hail damage repair completed on asphalt shingle roof in Plano TX” tells Google exactly what the image shows, where the work was done, and what type of roof was involved.

That description becomes searchable. When a homeowner in Plano searches “hail damage roof repair,” that image can appear in Google Image Search — a direct pathway to the roofing company’s website. Without the alt text, the image is a black box. Google skips it.

Google Image Search accounts for a meaningful share of roofing-related searches. Homeowners evaluating storm damage often search visually — they want to compare what their damaged roof looks like against completed repairs. They click images, land on roofing websites, and become leads. But only if those images have alt text that matches their search.

Accessibility for Visually Impaired Users

Screen readers — assistive technology used by visually impaired people — read alt text aloud when they encounter an image. Without alt text, the screen reader either skips the image entirely or reads the file name, which is typically something like “IMG_4582.jpg.” That tells the user nothing.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires websites to be accessible. Missing alt text is the most commonly cited accessibility violation in website lawsuits. ADA lawsuits against small business websites have increased significantly, and roofing companies are not exempt.

This isn’t just about compliance. It’s about the roughly 7 million Americans with visual impairments who might need a roofer. A site without alt text doesn’t just fail an accessibility audit — it excludes potential customers.

The SEO Value Roofers Are Leaving on the Table

Let’s quantify what zero alt tags actually costs a roofing company in search visibility.

A typical roofing website has 20-50 images across its pages — homepage hero shots, gallery photos, team photos, certification badges, and service page graphics. Each of those images is a potential search entry point. A photo with the alt text “Wind damage repair on tile roof in Tampa FL” can rank for:

“wind damage roof repair Tampa”
“tile roof wind damage”
“Tampa roof repair before after”

A site with 30 properly described images has 30 potential search entry points through Google Image Search alone. A site with zero alt tags has zero.

Over the course of a year, those image-driven searches add up. In storm markets like Texas and Florida, where homeowners frequently search for damage-specific terms with visual intent, Google Image Search can drive 5-15% of a roofing website’s total organic traffic. For a site getting 500 organic visitors per month, that’s 25-75 additional visitors — the kind who are specifically looking at storm damage photos and are ready to call.

At a conversion rate of 5% and an average job value of $8,000-$25,000, those 25-75 extra visitors from image search can mean 1-4 additional jobs per month. Just from adding text descriptions to photos that already exist on the site.

What Bad Alt Text Looks Like

Not all alt text is created equal. Among the 612 sites with partial coverage, we found common patterns that undermine the value:

Generic or Meaningless Alt Text

alt="image" — tells Google nothing
alt="photo" — tells Google nothing
alt="roof" — barely better than nothing
alt="IMG_4582" — the file name auto-inserted by the CMS

These are technically present but functionally useless. Google can’t determine location, service type, or relevance from “photo” or “roof.” The alt text exists but provides zero SEO value.

Keyword-Stuffed Alt Text

Some sites go the opposite direction, cramming every keyword into the alt text:

alt="best roof repair roofing company Houston TX roofing contractor emergency roof repair hail damage"

Google recognizes keyword stuffing and may penalize the page. Alt text should describe the image naturally, not act as a hidden keyword dump. A single accurate description beats a string of keywords every time.

Stock Photo Alt Text

Sites using stock images often inherit the stock service’s default alt text — descriptions like “Man working on roof in sunny weather” or “New residential home with blue sky.” These descriptions are accurate but useless for local SEO. They don’t mention the company’s city, the type of work, or anything that connects to how homeowners actually search.

What Good Alt Text Looks Like for Roofers

The formula is simple. Describe what the image shows using terms a homeowner would search for. Include location when relevant. Keep it under 125 characters.

Here are examples for common roofing photos:

Photo Type	Good Alt Text
Before/after hail damage	”Before and after hail damage repair on asphalt shingle roof in Plano TX”
Completed re-roof	”Completed GAF Timberline HDZ shingle installation on residential home in Tampa FL”
Drone aerial	”Drone inspection of storm-damaged commercial roof in Houston TX”
Insurance work	”Insurance-approved roof replacement after Hurricane Milton in Fort Myers FL”
Crew photo	”Roofing crew installing standing seam metal roof in Atlanta GA”
Certification badge	”GAF Master Elite certified roofing contractor badge”
Gutter installation	”New seamless aluminum gutter system installed on two-story home in Dallas TX”

Each description is specific, includes a city name, and uses natural language. None of them are stuffed with keywords. All of them give Google clear context for what the image shows and where the work was done.

Why This Problem Exists at 31%

The reason 438 roofing websites have zero alt text is straightforward: nobody told the roofer it mattered, and the web developer didn’t add it.

Most roofing websites are built by small agencies, freelancers, or the roofer themselves using a DIY platform. The focus is on making the site look good — colors, layout, photos. Alt text is invisible. It doesn’t change how the site looks. So it gets skipped.

On platforms like WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace, every image upload includes an alt text field. It’s right there in the interface. But it’s optional. If you leave it blank, the site still works. The image still displays. The only thing that breaks is something you can’t see — search engine visibility and accessibility.

This is the definition of a silent revenue leak. The site looks complete. The photos look great. The roofer doesn’t know anything is missing. Meanwhile, competitors with proper alt text are capturing image search traffic that would have gone to them — and meeting accessibility requirements that protect against lawsuits.

How to Add Alt Text to Every Image This Week

This is one of the lowest-effort, highest-impact fixes in our entire 34-element roofing website checklist. No developer needed. No redesign. Just text entry.

WordPress

Go to Media Library in your WordPress dashboard
Click any image
In the Alt Text field on the right, type a description
Click Save
Repeat for every image

For images embedded in pages and posts, you can also edit the alt text directly in the block editor by clicking the image and filling in the alt text field.

Time estimate: 1-2 minutes per image. 30 images = 30-60 minutes total.

Wix

Click the image in the Wix Editor
Select the image settings icon
Enter alt text in the provided field
Publish

Squarespace

Click the image in your page editor
Find the Image Description or Alt Text field
Enter the description
Save

Custom HTML Sites

Add or update the alt attribute on each <img> tag. Change <img src="photo.jpg"> to <img src="photo.jpg" alt="Description of what the photo shows">.

The Compound Effect of Alt Text + Image Optimization

Alt text becomes even more powerful when combined with the image optimization practices we covered in our post about roofing website images killing load time. Here’s why:

Optimized images load faster → Pages rank higher → More visitors see the photos → Alt text brings additional traffic from image search → More total visitors → More leads.

Unoptimized images with no alt text → Pages load slowly → Visitors bounce → Photos are invisible to Google → Zero image search traffic → Minimum possible leads from the visual content.

The two fixes — optimizing image files and adding alt text — take less than a day for most roofing websites. Together, they address both the speed and the visibility problems that plague 31% of sites in our audit.

Common Alt Text Mistakes to Avoid

As you add alt text to your images, avoid these patterns that reduce or eliminate the SEO value:

Don’t start with “Image of” or “Photo of.” Screen readers already announce that the element is an image. Starting with “Image of” is redundant. Just describe what’s shown.

Don’t leave decorative images with descriptive alt text. Purely decorative elements — background textures, divider lines, design flourishes — should have empty alt text (alt=""). This tells screen readers to skip them. Only content images need descriptions.

Don’t use the same alt text for multiple images. Each photo is different. Each alt tag should be unique. Copying the same description across 20 images dilutes the SEO value and tells Google nothing about what makes each photo distinct.

Don’t forget certification badges and logos. These are images too. A GAF Master Elite badge with alt="GAF Master Elite certified roofing contractor" communicates trust to both Google and screen reader users.

Don’t exceed 125 characters. Google truncates alt text in some contexts. Keep descriptions concise. One clear sentence is better than a paragraph.

This Is a 30-Minute Fix Worth Thousands Per Month

Of all 34 elements we evaluate in a roofing website audit, image alt tags have the best return on time invested. The work is simple — type a sentence for each photo. The tools are free — every major CMS has an alt text field built in. The payoff is immediate — Google re-indexes pages within days, and image search traffic starts flowing.

438 roofing companies in our audit are invisible to Google Image Search across every photo on their site. Their galleries, their before-and-after shots, their drone aerials, their completed projects — all of them exist in a search engine blind spot.

The roofers who add alt text don’t gain a competitive advantage in the traditional sense. They simply stop being invisible. In a market where $187 per Google Ads click is the norm and organic traffic is the cheapest lead source available, making your existing photos discoverable is not an optimization. It’s a correction of a mistake that’s been costing you leads from day one.

31% of Roofing Websites Have Zero Image Alt Tags — Invisible to Google