Writing as a discipline has become increasingly complex in the modern age. The chairs once occupied by philosophers with ink bottles and feather quills now hold copywriters, technical writers, SEO content specialists, and more. These roles have added countless new dimensions to the craft, but with that has come vagueness. What is a writer today? What does good writing look like now?
Simply put, a writer is someone who communicates information and ideas clearly in textual form. Doing anything less is a failure; your readers must understand you. Fundamentally good writing is text that an audience can read and comprehend with minimal uncertainty regarding its meaning. A text lacking that quality is poorly written.
However, with the cold reality of needing to appeal to search engines, not to mention the dozens of formatting strategies to consider in the technical sphere, how can professional writers maintain clarity in their writing? How do they keep their identity as expert communicators? Throughout my years as a writer, I have faced these questions repeatedly, and over those years, I’ve found my answer. To keep clarity alive, writers must be adaptable.
SEO Vs Clarity
SEO is the backbone of good digital writing. It drives organic traffic to blog articles, connects people to online businesses, and has built the online space we inhabit. But too often, it comes at the cost of clarity.
Balancing SEO with clarity is the hardest part of an SEO Content Writer’s job. A single keyword can dramatically boost a page’s ranking, but it can just as easily hurt readability. That conflict puts writers in a difficult position; do you go for high impact or a digestible piece? As I’ve learned from writing over fifty blog articles, the solution isn’t choosing between clarity and SEO. Instead, you can use SEO while maintaining clarity in your writing by creating purpose-driven content with a narrow, precise scope. Staying on topic leads to a clear message, and that focus helps keywords integrate naturally.
When I think about this solution in action, my article “Gachiakuta: The Power of Character Relationships” comes to mind. From an SEO standpoint, it’s the best-performing piece I’ve ever written, drawing organic traffic monthly since publication. But what made it succeed wasn’t what I crammed in — it was what I left out. In a blog post all about character relationships in a story, it would’ve been easy to dive into character writing, as that’s very closely related to the subject matter. More than that, it likely would’ve improved the already solid first-page ranking of the article by opening it up to more queries. However, my decision to exclude that topic and keep my scope narrow is what makes that article work and rank as well as it does. Its clear message about character relationships being impactful in writing is conveyed well, and the keywords it targets, like “Gachiakuta relationships,” make it visible to the people most likely to read it.
Clarity in Technical Documentation
The challenge with technical documentation is formatting. In industries like SaaS, e-commerce, and others, relying solely on words to convey information can hamper the speed of daily operations. These documents need to be digested quickly, which is why they employ tables, graphs, visual aids, bulleted lists, and other structural tools to communicate key details—diverse structures simply inform faster. These formatting strategies allow employees to stay informed without pulling them away from their responsibilities for too long. But when you’re sitting in the writer’s seat, you’re the one responsible for creating that communication speed, and that presents a daunting problem: How do you inform fully and fast while still writing clearly?
Directness is your ally here. Unlike with SEO or creative writing, you aren’t trying to hook the reader when making technical documentation. They have a job to do, and they need information—interest is a given. Because of that, you should write in simple, informative statements; sentences should only be lengthy if you’re defining something, like what “Best” quality means in a project requirements document. This shorter sentence structure works in lists or tables and when making captions for visuals, ensuring communication speed is high without compromising clarity in your writing.
I learned the importance of directness in technical documentation while I was working on a release notes sample. As I was still learning about the fundamentals of technical writing, creating something without any embellishment felt wrong after years spent crafting for engagement. However, by looking over my course’s training videos, doing research, and recalling the LinkedIn Learning course “Writing for Impact,” I came to understand that selling your piece isn’t always necessary. Short, definitive statements are gold for communicating—they’re impactful and uncomplicated. Once I embraced that truth, my sample reached the level of quality I wanted. It includes clean bulleted lists, clear explanations, and strategic bolding to further boost communication speed.
Circling back to the dilemma of expressing information clearly, what does a narrow scope or directness have to do with maintaining clarity in writing?
They’re both examples of adapting to the environment you write in. Prose alone doesn’t cut it in the age of information—people need to rank on search engines; people need details faster than ever before. Accommodating those needs means analyzing your writing environment and figuring out how to keep your words clear in that space. This is how professional writers keep their fundamental identity as writers, and more importantly, how they thrive in an ever-changing world.
Luke Princeton Nazaire 