A must read piece from Slate, providing tips and insight into what works in online writing/reading. As a web reader, my anecdotal experience bears out much of this. I also like the piece because it conforms to my view of great content being valuable over time, as it notes:
But Nielsen's idea is that people will read (and maybe even pay) for expertise that they can't find anywhere else. If you want to beat the Internet, you're not going to do it by blogging (since even OK thinkers occasionally write a great blog post) but by offering a comprehensive take on a subject (thus saving the reader time from searching many sites) and supplying original thinking (offering trusted insight that cannot be easily duplicated by the nonexpert).
Other good tips/info about as well, including looks at readability, hints for maximizing reading speed/comprehension online, and tips for the writer:
Nielsen's apt description of the online reader: "[U]sers are selfish, lazy, and ruthless." You, my dear user, pluck the low-hanging fruit. When you arrive on a page, you don't actually deign to read it. You scan. If you don't see what you need, you're gone.
And it's not you who has to change. It's me, the writer:
I’m a huge reader of online content, but given the choice will still print something out if I need to make edits, ensure I really have grasped the overall flow – especially true when reading longer documents. When I have a touchscreen on my desktop computer at work, that may change. :)