Should Your Manchester Copywriter Be Based in Manchester?

Apr 6
09:41

2012

Nigel Graber

Nigel Graber

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It's no longer 2007, things have changed and copywriters just can't market themselves in the same way any more. Here's one strategy that's paying off for a UK copywriter.

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The last few years have been a bit rough for UK copywriters. The gravy train,Should Your Manchester Copywriter Be Based in Manchester? Articles after the rich pickings of the mid-noughties, has been rather shunted onto the sidelines. And the gravy's all over the track.

It took a while for the alarm bells to ring. Even those news pictures of the run on Northern Rock didn't really register until it was too late. Now, five years later, many of us are counting the cost of sticking to the same old business plan.

Where once we just switched on Google Adwords and chucked a few hundred quid at the problem each month, we now have to think more laterally. It seems the only people clicking onto our Adwords ads now are marketing managers laid off in the recession, trying to pick up tips on freelance copywriting.

But there's another problem that's destroying copywriting in the UK: a welter of Indian and Brazilian copywriters peddling content at $3 a page. They're turning copywriting into a commodity and something needs to be done about it.

In short, copywriting has ceased to be something we copywriters can market in a mainstream way. What's required is a niche approach to marketing. And when it comes to niche marketing, Google is still your friend.

Many copywriters simply look for work in their own geographical area. They use long-tail keywords with local places tacked onto their copywriting keywords.

But why not spread your wings? In these days of the Internet, there's no need for your copywriter to be based in the same city or town as his client. We've all got Skype, email and phones. We can all use PDFs and file-sharing. So let's not show up at the client's office and scoff all the biscuits, eh?

With a basic grasp of keywords, anyone can create a long-tail web page with a geographical focus on wherever they like. Want to be an Edinburgh copywriter? A London copywriter? No problem. Just stick the right keywords in your H1 and H2 tags, rehash them at 5% density, add a few judicious backlinks, and you're good to go.

Best of all, this geographical long-tail strategy is one that costs next to nothing. We've pretty much all got content-management systems that mean we can create new pages for free. Want backlinks? Most articles sites cost zilch, too.

So, if you're based in Manchester and looking for a copywriter in Manchester, ask yourself why. Shouldn't you be looking for the best copywriter for the job, not just the nearest?

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