How I wrote 70+ SEO-ready pages for the new Stanley Gibbons Baldwin’s website in nine weeks

The knowledge was all there. It sat with the specialists, in the old Stanley Gibbons and Baldwin’s websites and in a pile of print material, and very little of it had made it onto the old site.

Collecting has its own language, and every department speaks a slightly different version of it.

Before writing a word, I asked for their tone of voice guide, a sitemap with target phrases for each page and a brief from each department. We agreed a staged plan with core pages first and department pages second, with feedback rounds built in before launch.

The project started at around 50 pages and finished at more than 70, as new departments and subpages joined the list along the way. Briefs arrived in batches, and some changed once the specialists weighed in. The Commonwealth stamps page was written by region, then rewritten into six reigns. The world coins page was reworked around the areas their expert wanted to lead with.

Where I wasn’t sure, I asked. Fan sites disagreed about the eras of comic collecting, so I checked with their comics specialist, and the page was better for it.

Once the CMS was ready, I worked in it directly instead of sending documents back and forth. I could see how the copy sat on each layout, fix things myself and flag the bits that needed a developer, like a valuation form that had been hard coded onto the page.