Technical Writing and SEO

I started an online course on technical writing. So far, the rudimentary videos confirm my assumptions about the trade.

One video in particular—“Characteristics of Effective Technical Documents, Including SEO”—did grab my interest. This seemed a pretty specific skill to present amid a generic overview with explanations along the lines of, “Technical writing is distilling complex concepts in clear language tailored to the needs of a particular audience.”

I wanted to learn about Search Engine Optimization, but the video included no discussion of it. Diligent online learner that I am, I explored the recommended course reading material and found a deep dive into SEO, starting with the reminder that search engines follow algorithms to order and rank result pages. The material encouraged students to make use of such algorithms by implementing SEOs using the following techniques:

1. Creating high-quality content
2. Using the right and distinct keywords
3. Understanding the importance of URLs, tags, and links
4. Improving the website user-interface
5. Working on metrics like loading speed, loading time, and stability 

The information strikes me two ways. First, against considerations of writing as craft, these concepts get 1.5 stars out of five for desirability (high quality content earns it a star, and distinct keywords half a star more). The rest distract from the fundamental joy and purpose of writing in the first place: to communicate, to inform, to entertain, to share emotion and feeling and intent in some kind of visual, potentially permanent, way. In this frame of mind, three of the recommendations seem “too complicated” and not worth pursuing.

On second thought, however, they may not be all that difficult to implement with a little effort. I’m sure they’re downright basic to professionals involved in that place where wires and dials and software churn and whir behind the screen and beneath the keys. It might not be an “art” that excites me, but it is a kind of art after all.

I started chipping away at the list of improvements I can make here. Why not merge these disparate approaches to the whole concept of writing? I’m going to leave numbers four and five for now and begin by tackling some of the easier on-page methods (links, URLs, and keywords).

I also linked my site to Google Search Console to get reports on how things here perform on Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERP). It took some resilience to figure out, but I did. If you work using WordPress recommend following their instructions rather than be led by the nose at Google’s site.

The action is just now taken, so results aren’t available. But I hope they’ll point me in the direction of using better keywords.

##