Two fields sit on every Etsy digital listing that almost nobody fills in properly: alt text on each photo, and the materials field. Neither shows up in the usual advice about titles and tags, because neither one is a tag. But a scored audit of 411 listings found 37% had no alt text on any photo at all, and 33% were barely touching the materials field — which allows up to 13 more searchable entries, on top of the 13 tags most sellers already know about.
What alt text actually is
Alt text is a short written description attached to a single photo. It was built for screen readers, so a blind shopper's browser can describe an image out loud. Etsy's search doesn't read pixels — it reads text. Alt text is one of the only pieces of text on a listing that a search engine outside Etsy, like Google Images, can read directly, because unlike a title or description it's attached to the image itself, not the page around it.
It's easy to skip because it isn't on the main listing form. It lives one level down, inside each individual photo, so a seller filling out a title, tags and description in one pass can finish the whole listing without ever seeing the field.
How to actually add it
Open the listing in edit mode and click into one of the photos, not the listing form around it. A small pencil or edit icon appears on the photo itself — that opens the alt text field for that one image. It's per photo, not per listing, so a listing with ten images has ten separate fields to fill.
What to actually write: describe what's in the photo, plainly, the way you'd describe it to someone who can't see it. "Watercolor floral printable wall art in a white frame above a bed" beats "cute art" — it's not keyword-stuffing if every word is actually true of the image, it's just being specific instead of vague.
What the materials field is for
The materials field is built for physical listings — fabric, wood, that kind of thing — which is exactly why digital sellers assume it doesn't apply to them and leave it untouched. It still takes up to 13 entries, and Etsy doesn't restrict what goes in them. File type, file formats, sizes included, software needed to open a file — all of that fits, and none of it competes with the 13 tags, because it's a separate field with its own separate search weight.
Alt text vs. the materials field
| Alt text | Materials field | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it lives | Inside each individual photo | Below tags, on the main listing form |
| How many | One per photo | Up to 13 entries, listing-wide |
| What it's read by | Screen readers, and search engines outside Etsy | Etsy's own search |
| What goes in it | A plain, accurate description of that photo | File type, formats, sizes, software needed |
A quick audit you can run today
Open a handful of your listings and check two things: does every photo have alt text, and is the materials field empty or close to it. Older listings, made before either field felt worth the extra click, are usually the ones missing both. Neither fix takes long — alt text is a sentence per photo, the materials field is a list of facts you already know about your own files.
PromptlessPress writes a title, all 13 tags, and a description for every listing it generates — alt text and the materials field are the two fields worth finishing by hand once the rest is done. Try the free tag generator to see the tag side of it first.