SEO Takeoff! AI + N8N Batch Auto-Modify Alt Text, I Saved $100 in Plugin Fees

💡 "Series Article": My Journey with N8N in Global Selling - Beginner 0-1 Series Part 3

📖 "Previous Review": 2025 Most Complete: 4 Methods to Deploy N8N, Including Permanent Free Solution

In this article, we'll officially enter real N8N teaching and practice.

In the upcoming teaching mode:

• I won't break down every small feature and explain theory to you endlessly
• I won't give you some generic "daily life" scenarios for demonstrations, like sending useless emails or summarizing useless information blah blah blah
• Instead, I'll give cross-border sellers real Shopify business scenarios

Strive to achieve: "One feature explanation + One real automation business scenario" each time!

Also, don't worry about not being able to digest the complete business scenario from each example at once—this should actually become your motivation for self-learning.

Another Soft Ad for Max Group

1. I'll deploy a public test version of N8N on my own server to take care of some group members who can't or find it inconvenient to deploy N8N. For group members to test and play.

2. I'll save the workflows from each tutorial in group documents and the public N8N server, so group members can better learn and practice.

"Welcome to join the Max Group."

This Time We'll Cover One of the Most Important Nodes in N8N Automation:

1. This Article's Business Scenario:

When merchants upload and update/edit products, since they need to upload many product images, the alt text of images plays a very important role for SEO. I hope to leverage AI's image recognition capability to generate Alt text. And I need it to be a fully automated process.

Overall Process:

Compared to the SEO Image plugins we usually use that cost tens of dollars a month, this process is not only cheaper but more importantly AI-empowered. AI can truly recognize images to generate more unique and specific ALT TEXT, rather than generic, unified, rule-based, static copy.

2. What is Webhook

"Webhook is a 24/7 continuous signal receiver, just like SMS and push notifications in your phone."

In the Shopify scenario, when there's any activity in your store (like new orders, product updates, inventory changes), it immediately "calls" your system to notify this message, allowing you to handle it in real-time automatically, instead of manually checking every few minutes.

3. Practical: How to Configure Shopify Webhook

3.1 Step 1: Create Webhook in Shopify Backend

3.2 Step 2: Create Webhook Node in N8N

4. Practical: How to Use AI to Generate Alt Text

4.1 Step 1: Filter Images That Need Processing

// Function node code example
const images = $input.body.product.images;

const imagesWithoutAlt = images.filter(img => !img.alt || img.alt === '');

return {
  json: {
    images: imagesWithoutAlt,
    product: $input.body.product
  }
};

4.2 Step 2: Call AI to Generate Alt Text

4.3 Step 3: Update Shopify Product Images

5. Complete Workflow Example

This workflow achieves:

1. Automatic Monitoring: Automatically triggers when new products are created or products are updated
2. Smart Filtering: Only processes images without alt text
3. AI Empowerment: Uses AI to recognize image content and generate accurate alt text
4. Automatic Updates: Automatically updates generated alt text back to Shopify

6. Common Issues and Solutions

6.1 What to do if Webhook doesn't work?

6.2 How to improve AI-generated Alt Text quality?

7. Summary

Through this tutorial, we learned:

1. Concept of Webhook: 24/7 continuous signal receiver
2. Shopify Webhook Configuration: How to create and configure Webhooks in Shopify
3. N8N Webhook Node: How to receive and process Webhooks in N8N
4. AI Integration: How to call AI API to generate Alt Text
5. Shopify API Call: How to update Shopify product information

FAQ

This tutorial is based on N8N 1.x version and Shopify Admin API 2024-01 version.