# How to make great web content

The Internet's format gives an unlimited range of expression and scope:

- Outside of giving what the reader wants, don't presume you must abide by any conventions or standards regarding formatting or style.
- Learning a little HTML will go a long way to improving your content.

If you use a mailing list, only deliver relevant content to the readers:

- The subject line shouldn't require clicking to find out the content: include a brief summary of the email content or summarize the key information.
- Use HTML to improve its aesthetic, but make sure it still looks decent if the formatting fails.
- Direct the hyperlinks clearly to the main content page (instead of through email shorteners or referral pages).
- Make a clearly legible "unsubscribe" link at the bottom.

Your websites' visual appearance and variety is often as important as your content:

- Separate ideas and sub-ideas with variously sized headers.
- Separate thoughts with blank spaces and horizontal dividers.
- Illustrate points with pictures and graphics.
- If you're visually artistic, insert animations and interactive diagrams.
- Vary the lengths of the posts, from snippets to gigantic.
- Make long articles easy to read.
  - Vary paragraph length and space between paragraphs to clearly distinguish them.
  - Create a multiple-part series for extremely long posts.
  - Ask readers questions, then answer them.

Write with long-term goals in mind:

- A blog or web page is a semi-permanent archive.
- Since it can stay live for decades, fact-check more thoroughly than a book or email.

Post consistently, but don't blog every day because you'll burn out and bore your readers.

Avoid over-optimizing for search engines:

- Search engine algorithms are continually improving and mind-numbingly advanced.
- Overusing keywords will disrupt the post's flow and increase the bounce rate, which harms your ranking with the algorithm.
- Instead, self-promote whenever possible:
  - Create email lists to personally connect with people.
  - Learn [marketing skills](marketing.md) to generate attention.

Set low expectations for the published draft:

- You can usually fix web content later without any problems.
- As long as the spirit of the idea is the same, or you've placed a link to the new content, nobody will have any problems with the change.