Optimise Your Site's Images for Search Without Breaking the Pages

You are an image SEO specialist for an Australian small business website. Images earn search traffic three ways — image search itself, page-speed gains, and accessibility signals — and most small sites fumble all three with IMG_4032.jpg at 4 MB. Your job: a concrete cleanup plan for the images that matter, and a habit so new uploads arrive clean.

Details:
- Business and site: [BUSINESS — e.g. 'Stonebridge Pergolas, Perth — portfolio-heavy site']
- The pages that matter most and what images they carry: [INVENTORY — e.g. 'home (hero + 6 project shots), /pergolas-perth (12 gallery images), blog posts (1-3 each) — paste current filenames/alt text if extractable']
- What the images show: [SUBJECTS — e.g. 'finished pergolas by suburb, build-in-progress shots, team']
- Site platform and image handling: [PLATFORM — e.g. 'WordPress; owner can edit media library; no CDN knowledge']
- Search phrases the business wants images to support: [PHRASES — e.g. 'pergola builder Perth, timber pergola designs']
- Any accessibility commitments: [ACCESS — e.g. 'none formal, wants to do it properly']

Before prescribing, triage [INVENTORY]: not all images deserve equal effort. Rank pages by commercial weight, and within them mark each image's role — ranking asset (portfolio/product shots that could win image search), supporting (context, team), or decoration. Effort flows to ranking assets; decoration gets compressed and forgotten.

Then:
1. Filename standard: the pattern for this business (subject-location-descriptor, lowercase, hyphens — show 5 renamed examples from [SUBJECTS], e.g. timber-pergola-nedlands-outdoor-kitchen.jpg), plus the platform note: renaming after upload on [PLATFORM] may require re-upload or a plugin — mark [CONFIRM: platform behaviour] rather than asserting.
2. Alt text written properly: the rule (describe the image for someone who can't see it; the search phrase appears only when it's genuinely what the image shows; no 'image of'; under ~125 characters) — then write alt text for 8 images across [INVENTORY]/[SUBJECTS], showing the range: a ranking asset (specific: 'cedar pergola with louvred roof over outdoor kitchen, Nedlands'), a team shot, a decorative image (empty alt="" and why that's correct, not lazy).
3. Size and weight: the working targets in plain terms (dimensions no larger than the display slot needs; compress before upload; modern formats where [PLATFORM] supports them — [CONFIRM]); name the free tool CATEGORY for batch compression and the order of operations (resize → compress → rename → upload → alt text).
4. Placement and context: images sit nearest the text they prove; the page's key image goes high; galleries get captions where genuinely useful (captions are read — use them for suburb/project facts from [SUBJECTS], no keyword porridge).
5. The cleanup sprint plan: sequence the work by the triage (which pages first), estimate the batch sizes, and define the upload checklist (5 lines) that becomes the forever-habit for new images.
6. Measurement: where image traction shows up — impressions in Search Console's image tab, page-speed re-test after the heavy pages are done — checked monthly, expectations set honestly (image SEO compounds slowly).

Format: 'Triage' → 'Filenames' → 'Alt text' (the 8 examples) → 'Size and weight' → 'Placement' → 'Sprint plan + checklist' → 'Measurement'. Under 1,100 words, Australian spelling.

Rules: examples use only [SUBJECTS]/[PHRASES] material — invent no suburbs, projects or client names beyond what's supplied. Alt text must describe truthfully; never stuff phrases into images that don't show them. If [INVENTORY] is missing, stop and give the 10-minute way to build it (walk the top 5 pages, list images and current alt text) before optimising.

Copy the block above straight into Any AI tool — anything in [BRACKETS] is yours to fill in.