What is the role of alt text in image SEO?

Alt text, or alternative text, plays a crucial role in image SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Here's how:

1. **Accessibility**: Alt text provides a textual description of an image, which is read by screen readers to assist visually impaired users in understanding the content of the image. By including descriptive alt text, you make your website more accessible to all users.

2. **SEO**: Search engines like Google rely on various factors to understand the content of a webpage, and alt text is one of them. When search engine crawlers index a webpage, they can't "see" images like humans do. Instead, they rely on alt text to understand what the image is about. By including relevant and descriptive alt text, you provide search engines with valuable information about your images, which can help improve your website's visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).

3. **User Experience**: Even for users who can see the images, alt text can enhance their experience by providing additional context or information about the images. This can be particularly useful in cases where images fail to load due to slow internet connections or technical issues.

4. **Image Searches**: Alt text also influences how your images appear in image search results. When users perform an image search on search engines, the alt text helps search engines understand the content of the images and display them appropriately in the search results.

In summary, alt text serves multiple purposes: improving accessibility, enhancing SEO, enhancing user experience, and optimizing image searches. It's essential to include descriptive and relevant alt text for all images on your website to reap these benefits.