Alt text
Alt text is a short written description of an image, added in the HTML, that screen readers read aloud to people who can't see the image and that search engines use to understand what the picture shows.
Last updated: June 9, 2026
Every image on a page can carry an alt attribute. Its first job is accessibility: someone using a screen reader hears the description instead of seeing the photo. It also acts as a fallback when an image fails to load, and it gives search engines a text clue about visual content they can't otherwise read. Good alt text is specific and plain. "Black ceramic pour-over coffee dripper on a wooden counter" tells you far more than "coffee" or "image123.jpg".
For a Shopify store this matters most on product and collection images, which is where a lot of shopping intent lives. Clear alt text helps those images surface in Google Images and makes the page usable for everyone. The trick is to describe the product honestly rather than stuffing keywords. If an image is purely decorative, an empty alt attribute is the correct choice so screen readers can skip it.
Writing alt text for hundreds of product photos by hand is tedious, which is why it's often left blank. Seokai can generate accurate alt text for your catalog images automatically, so the descriptions are there without the manual grind.
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Canonical URL
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