Alt text (alternative text) is a short description attached to every image on your store. It tells Google what the image shows — so it can rank in Image Search — and is read by screen readers for visually impaired shoppers. When it's missing, Google sees a blank where it should see "handmade leather wallet in chestnut brown, front view showing card slots" — and your images become invisible to image search.
The average Shopify store has 60–80% of product images missing alt text. That's not just an accessibility problem — it's a traffic problem. Google Image Search drives 22% of all web searches. For product-based businesses, image search traffic converts at nearly 2x the rate of regular search because the buyer has already seen what they want before clicking. Missing alt text means you're invisible to that traffic entirely.
Visit any product page on your store, right-click a product image, and click Inspect.
In the developer tools, find the <img> tag. Look for the alt="..." attribute. If it's empty (alt="") or missing entirely, that image has no alt text.
In Shopify Admin, go to Products → click any product → click on a product image. The alt text field appears in the panel that opens. If it's blank, that image has no alt text.
For a full-store check, use the free Meta Tag Checker tool or a crawler like Screaming Frog to export a list of all images and their alt text status.
In Shopify Admin, go to Products → click a product → click each product image. In the alt text field that appears, write a descriptive phrase.
Include: product name, color/material, angle or view (front, side, detail), and any key feature visible in this specific image.
Good alt text example: "Handmade leather wallet in chestnut brown — front view showing 6 card slots and bill compartment"
Bad alt text examples: "wallet", "IMG_3847", "product photo", or the exact same text on every image.
For non-product images (banners, lifestyle photos): add alt text through the theme editor. Go to Online Store → Themes → Customize, click the image section, and look for the alt text field.
Work through your products systematically — highest-traffic products first. A good pace is 5–10 products per session.
Using the image filename as alt text ("IMG_3847.jpg" tells Google nothing useful)
Keyword stuffing in alt text ("buy cheap leather wallet best leather wallet discount") — Google ignores this and it hurts your rankings
Writing the same alt text for every image of the same product — each angle should describe what's specifically visible in that shot
Skipping non-product images like banners and lifestyle photography — they count too
Going over 125 characters — keep alt text concise and descriptive, not a paragraph
High
30 minutes to 2 hours depending on product count
Beginner-friendly
Meta Tag Checker
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