Alt Image attributes

[cohlert]

Hi There, 

I have a question regarding alt tag for images. 

In our new shops, the alt attribute will be created automatically based on the file name (but without a hyphen in between) on all images of a same product. Example: cookies and cream candle 

Is this repetition an issue? Are there some next practices we could implement here?

Thanks in advance

Camila

[deep219]

Hi Camila, 

Alt tags are basically for people with visual impairment disability. 
So, it shall be in natural language describing your products. 

That helps with SEO quite a lot. 

Submit an image map later on for Google to crawl. It's going to help your site with SEO quite a lot. 

[PageFly-Victor]

Hi Camila,

Alt texts are mostly used for two cases:

• Some problem occurs that people cannot load your images, the alt text now tell them what the image is about.
• For Google bot to "read" your content, because it cannot read the content of images.

However, most of the time, people use alt text for Google to read, which is a way to optimize your page for SEO. So here's the answer for your question:

• If you don't care about SEO, then don't worry about the alt text.
• If you DO, then alt text is a precious position to insert important keywords to your store. And repeating the same words means wasting resources. (Not to mentions the risk that Google might consider that "keyword stuffing"

Here's what you should do:

• Research keywords, have a list of target keywords and important keywords
• Include important keywords in all alt text.

I hope this helps.

PS: If you want to learn more about SEO, you can check this article. It's about making your product pages SEO friendly. But I think once you can make product pages SEO friendly, you can do the same thing to any page.

[JoesIdeas · Accepted solution]

For alt attributes, I set up an automated system that names them like this: [product title] - [product type] [variation].

You can see the details + my full strategy in this article: Image SEO for Shopify.

Using an example with that system, an image's alt attribute might look like this: Smiley Face Tee – Men’s T-Shirt White.

That method works great for Google image search because you get the design name + product type + color, all things people search for.

If you haven't yet, search for your product keyword on Google images to see how they rank, how they show up, and what the text snippet looks like when you click on them.

You can get some really good insights in there. Over 20% of all US web searches happen on Google Images so it's definitely worth optimizing.

[drichardson]

Interesting read. Question... I use Printify print on demand service for some of my products. I generally create the product in my Printify account then publish it to my Shopify store. I then have to find the product in Shopify and manually edit the Alt Image tags for the images that are pushed from Printify to Shopify. The problem is if I have to re-publish the product again from Printify (due to edits or inventory adjustments)... then I loose my custom Alt Image tags and have to manually enter them all over again. How does your app work in this scenario with print on demand services?