Images: Background Images

CSS background and dynamically loaded images discovered across the website, which should be used for non-critical and decorative purposes.

Background images are not typically indexed by Google and browsers do not provide alt attributes or text on background images to assistive technology.

How to Analyse in the SEO Spider

Enable JavaScript rendering mode via ‘Config > Spider > Rendering’ and select ‘JavaScript’ to capture any background images. Crawl analysis must also be performed to populate this filter, via ‘Crawl Analysis > Start’.

View URLs with this issue in the ‘Images’ tab and ‘Background Images’ filter, and export all URLs using the ‘Export’ button.

View URLs that link to background images using the lower ‘Inlinks’ tab.

What Triggers This Issue

This issue is triggered when CSS background images and dynamically loaded images are used extensively across a website.

For example:

background-image: url('decorative-image.jpg')

How To Fix

Review CSS background images discovered and ensure they are correctly used for decorative images and styling.

If the image contains information critical to understanding the page’s overall purpose or are important for indexing, then Google recommended using <img> tags.