Hi Shopify Community,
I was wondering if someone could help clarify an SEO ALT text question. To date, my best practices for SEO and product images has been to correctly name the file’s prior to uploading - bulk uploading to Content → Files - and then adding ALT text there. Once completed, I then copy the links to the content and then add them to my product pages.
Once I add to my product page, it gives the option to add ALT text again and when clicking, ALT text is empty. Does the ALT text added from the Content → Files section not pull when you link a photo to your product?
Good morning @StevenChristo
This is Garcia from PageFly team, let me help you. Yes, that’s correct. The ALT text added from the Content → Files section does not automatically pull when you link a photo to your product. You will need to add the ALT text for each product image individually. This is because Shopify stores the ALT text for each product image separately from the image file itself.
While it is a good practice to name your image files descriptively, this is not enough for SEO purposes. Search engines rely on ALT text to understand the content of your images, and they will not be able to index your images properly if they do not have ALT text.
In case you have a large number of products, you can use the Alt text for product image SEO app to automatically generate ALT text for your product images, you can search more in Shopify App store. Recommendations based on my experience are Avada SEO & Image Optimizer; Tiny/ SEO Image optimizer, Speed; etc
Your efforts are greatly appreciated. I hope my response comes in handy.
Cheers,
Garcia
Hi @StevenChristo
Just to be clear, when you upload images through the files section and include the alt text there, this won’t automatically transfer when using those images on product pages.
Instead, you’d need to add the alt text again in Shopify’s product page section. This might be a little bit inconvenient if you have a large product catalog. So I recommend that you use an SEO app to bulk add alt text for your images.
For instance, I suggest Swift SEO Page Speed Optimizer app. The app will pull your product title and use it for the alt text of your product images. Some other apps with great alt text optimization you can consider are Avada SEO Image Optimizer or Tiny:SEO Image optimizer,Speed.
I hope that this helps!
Hi Steven, I wouldn’t recommend using non-smart ALT-Text bulk apps that simply read the product title and variant and input it as ALT Text. It would not pass ADA compliance and Google would look at it as irrelevant content. I wrote a blog on how to write effective ALT-Text for Shopify Products.
There are apps like Caseo.ai and Alttext.ai that can do AI-powered image reading ALT text.
Hi @StevenChristo ,
We eventually built our own image alt text feature in our app as rules based apps don’t really create alt attributes correctly for images. They are great for at least creating a semi relevant alt text at scale if you have 100s or 1000s or 10,0000s images. But most don’t actually follow best practice for alt text attributes.
While we should take what Google says in many cases with a grain of salt, the image alt text guidelines hold up well to actually generate clicks through to your store for image search.
This is what we do.
Hi @StevenChristo ,
Smart Bulk Image Upload app both bulk uploads product images and also adds alt-texts automatically. You can give a try 
Please let me know if you need any assistance or have any questions. I’d love to help
When your product image is also a link, alt text should still mainly describe the image, not act as anchor text. Something like “Blue ceramic coffee mug with lid” is clearer and more useful than just “coffee mug” or a keyword list. If you want to hint at the destination, you can do it naturally, for example “Blue ceramic coffee mug with lid from [brand].” On the automation side, apps like Naper AI’s Image Alt Text generator can create those descriptive lines per image so you are not stuck editing every link manually.
Hi @StevenChristo,
Sophia here from Tapita AI SEO & Speed Optimizer.
Short answer: No, the ALT text you add in Content → Files does not automatically carry over when you use that file on a product page. Shopify treats these as two separate contexts.
The Files section is basically a media library. ALT text added there is mostly for your own internal reference and for certain app usages, it’s not used as the default ALT text in product pages.
When you insert an image into a product, collection, blog, etc., Shopify creates an instance of that image in that specific context. That instance needs its own ALT text.
But when you add the image to a product, always add or edit the ALT text right there in the product page. That is the ALT text Google actually reads for product images.
If you ever need to automate bulk ALT text for all product images, you may need a dedicated SEO app like our Tapita AI SEO & Speed since Shopify doesn’t do this natively.
Hope this helps.