Alt text for Shopify images: how to write it, with examples

Good alt text describes what an image shows, in one short and specific sentence, as you would describe it to someone on the phone. On a Shopify store, it helps visually impaired visitors, and it helps Google understand your product photos.

What Google recommends

Google’s image guidelines ask for descriptive alt text that uses keywords appropriately and fits the content of the page. They warn against filling the attribute with keywords. They also recommend placing images near relevant text, which a product page does naturally.

Good and bad examples

A simple method

1. Name the product as a buyer would.
2. Add what the photo shows that the others do not: the color, the angle, the setting.
3. Stop there. Skip “image of” or “photo of”, which add nothing.

Adding it in Shopify

Each image in your product’s media has its own alt text field, which you edit from the product page in your Shopify admin. Do this for the variants too, since each color deserves its own description. Our Shopify SEO guide explains where images fit in the bigger picture.

When you have hundreds of images

Alt text is rarely hard, it is just repetitive, which is why so many stores leave it empty. Forgefont sorts your photos, writes the alt text and places each image in the right section. Configure your store to get started.