Last updated: 7 October 2026.
Copywriting is strategic and persuasive writing designed to encourage a person to take an action. That action might be buying a product, requesting information, booking an appointment, subscribing to a newsletter, clicking an advert, downloading a document or simply moving on to the next step in a commercial process.
Therefore, a copywriter’s job is not simply to write well. Good advertising copy needs to understand who it is speaking to, what problem it is trying to solve, what the company’s value proposition is and what we want the user to do after reading it. In the digital environment, this also means working properly on structure, user experience, SEO and, increasingly, the visibility of content in artificial intelligence systems.
In this guide I explain what copywriting is, what a copywriter does, the main types of copywriting, its relationship with digital marketing, how SEO copywriting works and the role artificial intelligence is playing in a profession that has changed considerably in recent years.
The simplest definition is this: copywriting means writing with a purpose. It is not about filling a page with words or using grandiose expressions. The copy should guide the reader towards a specific decision.
For example, the headline on a landing page may be designed to persuade the visitor to keep reading. The following copy should explain why the product or service responds to their needs. Arguments, examples and evidence reduce doubts. Finally, a call to action attempts to generate the conversion.
It is all part of the same process.
This also explains why copywriting and advertising have historically been so closely connected. Before the Internet, copy appeared in newspaper adverts, posters, leaflets, radio, television, direct marketing and catalogues. Today we still use many of the same psychological and communication principles, although the number of channels has multiplied.
A copywriter may now write for:
The channels change, but the underlying logic remains the same: communicate clearly and persuasively enough to generate a response.
A professional copywriter does not begin by writing. First, they need to understand the context.
Before writing commercial copy, I need to understand what is being sold, who should buy it, what problem it solves, why someone should choose that proposition over another and which objections might prevent a conversion.
For that reason, an important part of copywriting takes place before a single line is written.
A professional process will usually include:
This last point matters. Copywriting should not be judged simply because a piece of copy “sounds good”. If the objective of a landing page is to generate quote requests, one of the relevant metrics is its ability to generate those requests.
One common mistake is to confuse copywriting with particularly creative writing.
Creativity can be extremely useful, but highly creative copy that the audience does not understand is bad copy. Clarity is usually more important than trying to impress the reader.
This is particularly obvious on websites. The user should quickly understand:
If someone needs thirty seconds to interpret a paragraph before understanding what a company actually does, there is a communication problem.
For the same reason, I do not consider it good copywriting to fill a page with statements such as “we are market leaders”, “we provide the highest quality”, “innovative solutions” or “personalised service” if no information is provided to substantiate those claims.
Evidence is usually more persuasive than adjectives.
The boundaries can overlap, particularly in digital marketing, but these professionals do not have exactly the same objective.
| Role | Main objective | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Copywriter | Persuade and encourage an action | Service landing page |
| Content writer | Inform, educate or attract an audience | Blog article |
| Journalist | Report on matters of public interest | News article or feature |
In practice, an article can combine several of these functions. This content, for example, is designed to explain copywriting, but it is also part of a content strategy and contributes to the organic visibility of my website.
That overlap is precisely why SEO copywriting is an important discipline within digital marketing.
There is no single universally accepted classification and, in addition, one professional may work across several specialisms. Nevertheless, these are some of the most common types.
This is probably the form closest to the origins of the profession. Its purpose is to influence a decision relating to a product, service or brand.
It can be applied to adverts, campaigns, sales pages, brochures, videos, presentations or practically any other commercial asset.
The copy may seek an immediate sale, but not necessarily. Sometimes the objective is to create interest, improve brand recall or persuade the user to consider an option.
A web copywriter works specifically on copy designed for digital environments.
This can include:
Structure becomes particularly important here because reading behaviour on a screen is not identical to reading a printed piece. Headlines, subheadings, short sections, lists, buttons and visual hierarchy help users understand information quickly.
Social media copywriting needs to adapt to the behaviour and audience of each platform.
I would not write a professional LinkedIn post in the same way as an Instagram Reel, a Meta advert or a post on X. The brand may be the same, but the consumption context is different.
On social media, the first objective is often to stop the scroll and capture attention. After that come the message, usefulness, brand personality and the action we want to generate.
Email marketing contains several small copywriting challenges within the same asset.
The subject line needs to encourage the open. The opening needs to maintain attention. The body develops the message, while the call to action directs the reader towards the next step.
Moreover, a commercial email should avoid sounding like a generic sales email. The better we understand the recipient and their relationship with the brand, the more precise the communication can become.
SEO copywriting combines writing for people with the optimisation required for content to be understood, associated with a search intent and discovered through search engines.
This is the area of copywriting most closely related to my work as an SEO consultant.
SEO copywriting has changed considerably from the old idea of inserting a keyword a fixed number of times.
Keywords still have value. In fact, they continue to help us understand how users express a need and how search demand is structured.
However, optimising a piece of content now involves much more.
I currently work on factors such as:
Therefore, there would be little point in writing a 3,000-word article if the query can be properly answered in 700 words. Equally, it makes little sense to create a superficial 700-word piece when the user actually needs a comprehensive guide.
Length should respond to intent, not to an arbitrary word count.
In addition, a strong content strategy requires coherence with the rest of the website. Internal linking, site architecture and the thematic relationship between pages help create an ecosystem that is easier for both users and search systems to understand.
In 2026 there is another variable to consider. Content can now appear, be cited or be used as a source in generative systems such as AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.
This does not turn copywriting into a completely different discipline, nor does it mean that GEO replaces SEO. On the contrary, many of the underlying principles remain the same.
Clear, well-structured, specific and useful content supported by reliable information has more value regardless of whether the user discovers it directly in Google or reaches it through another environment.
The difference is that we now work across more visibility surfaces. In my guide on the evolution from SEO to GEO, I explore this change in greater depth.
For an SEO copywriter, this reinforces something that should already be fundamental: write to solve a genuine need rather than mechanically trying to manipulate an algorithm.
Artificial intelligence has changed the way content is produced, but it does not remove the need for strategy.
An AI tool can help to:
However, generating words quickly is not the same thing as producing good copywriting.
AI does not automatically know a company’s commercial positioning, the real conversations it has with customers, the nuances of its product, the most common objections, unpublished information, brand personality or the strategic objective of a campaign.
Therefore, professional value shifts even further towards research, judgement, editing and the ability to turn information into the right message.
The problem is not using artificial intelligence. The problem is publishing everything it generates without applying judgement.
There is no mathematical formula that works for every piece of copy, but there are several questions we can ask.
If most of the answers are negative, changing three words in the headline probably will not solve the problem.
Sometimes the entire proposition needs to be reconsidered.
After working for years in digital marketing, SEO and content, there are several mistakes I encounter regularly.
“We are”, “we have”, “we have been”, “we offer”… A company needs to explain who it is, but the user primarily wants to understand what they will get from it.
Good copy finds a balance between the two.
Saying that a service is “innovative, professional and of the highest quality” adds little if we do not explain what actually makes the service different or what concrete result the customer can obtain.
Not everyone is ready to buy at the same moment. In some content, the objective is to inform or answer a question in order to build trust before asking for a conversion.
Content stops being useful when we repeat a keyword until the copy sounds artificial. SEO optimisation should be integrated naturally into normal language and within a coherent semantic structure.
Commercial copy can be well written and still fail because nobody has decided what the user is supposed to do next.
Conversion is one of the fundamental concepts in digital copywriting.
Although we often associate conversion with a sale, it does not always mean generating revenue immediately. A conversion may be:
For that reason, copy should be designed around the objective of each page.
It is also important to measure performance. Just as we analyse data during an SEO audit to identify visibility problems, in copywriting we can study behaviour and conversions to determine which parts of a message are working and which need to be adjusted.
This is a fairly common source of confusion because the two words look similar.
Copywriting refers to persuasive and commercial writing.
Copyright refers to intellectual property and authors’ rights.
A copywriter writes copy; being a copywriter does not make someone a copyright specialist.
For me, copywriting remains one of the most important disciplines in marketing because it forces us to answer a very simple question: what do we want to communicate and what do we want to happen next?
Technology has changed radically since I started working with digital content. New social networks, new formats, automation systems, artificial intelligence, generative search engines and new ways of consuming information have all appeared.
However, the essential part of communication remains remarkably similar. We need to understand the person on the other side, provide relevant information, explain our proposition properly and do so clearly enough for them to make a decision.
That is why I do not separate copywriting completely from strategy. A piece of copy can be extremely well written and still be useless if it is based on the wrong proposition. Likewise, a company may have an excellent product and still lose opportunities because it cannot explain why that product should matter to its customer.
Artificial intelligence allows us to work faster and analyse far more information, but that is precisely why judgement becomes more valuable. If anyone can generate ten versions of a piece of copy in seconds, the difference is no longer in producing words: it lies in knowing which ones to use, which ones to remove and which message makes sense for each business.
That is the approach I apply both to SEO copywriting and to the rest of my digital marketing work: strategy, clarity, usefulness and a specific objective behind every piece of content.
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