Even in 2009 many people still don't know much about web content writing. Many individuals who have asked me for help with setting up their websites would often assume putting their life story, or their entire company background on to their homepage is totally acceptable.

In web-terms most people aren't that interested in spending time reading 8 pages of technical information about every website they go to.

Here are some facts about what web content writing is not:

• Web content writing is not academic writing.
• Web content writing is not like writing a book.
• Web content writing is also not like writing a journal article.

So what is web content writing?

So let's have a look at what web content writing is really all about. For starters, good web content is:

• Simple - Don't use overly complex words.
• Audience oriented - When writing for web imagine that you are talking to your readers, not trying to impress your English teacher.
• Scannable - Use proper formatting, including bullet points, numbered lists, tables, images, headings, sub headings, underlining, and links.
• Purpose oriented - The web is an information organism, in books there are common themes while on the web there are common information demands. Think of this as literally giving the reader something useful through your words.
• Paragraph based content - Every few weeks I'll log on to a web forum and find someone who has just posted a 3000 word topic in one paragraph. This is quite possibly the 3rd leading cause of headaches for avid web users. Short paragraphs are an important part of good formatting for all web writing.

Formatting

Format in web content writing is as important as content. That's the reason that I recommend learning some of the basic web tags. You don't need to learn web programming languages, but basic web writing makes simple HTML tag knowledge almost essential to anyone.

Here is an outline of basic heading tags you should know:

H1 tag (First Heading). Normally search engines consider this to be the title of the page. Hub Pages automates this heading.

Heading taxonomy rules are simple. If you use the H1 tag twice, then you are giving the other H1 tag as much importance as the page title. Doing that doesn't make much sense, does it? So use a H2 tag instead (Second Heading).

There are six heading levels in web content writing. H1 through H6. Don't skip heading levels. One example of good heading use is:

H1: Food That I Like
H2: Fruits
H3: Bananas (subset of fruits)
H3: Oranges
H2: Other Foods (notice I go back up to H2 here)
H3: Tomatoes
H3: Biscuits
H4: Chocolate Biscuits (subset of biscuits)
H4: Other Biscuits

Hub pages offers up to 4 heading levels which allows some solid organization once you are familier with the heading taxonomies used above.

Summary of this hub

Writing successful web content involves using simple and understandable language, with no words that you wouldn't be comfortable using in a spoken conversation. The content focuses on your audience and speaks to them rather than speaking at them.

Your content has a purpose, and it's possible to determine that your article provides useful information without having to read the first paragraph first. This means that using proper formatting like headings that stand out and bullet points that can be scanned within a few seconds is more useful than having a huge chunk of information in one paragraph.

Thank you for reading this hub, and I hope you enjoyed these tips on web content writing.