How to rewrite H2 headings as questions
Headings phrased as questions match how people ask assistants and make the answer below them easy to quote. Rewrite your main H2 headings as the question each section answers, and give a complete answer in the first sentence under each of those headings.
By ratemysite.ai editorial team. Updated .
How do you fix it?
- List the H2 headings of the page and mark which ones are labels such as "Overview" or "Benefits".
- Rewrite at least two as real questions, such as "What does a canonical tag do?".
- Answer in the first sentence under each heading, then add detail.
- Check the questions are ones people ask, using search suggestions and People Also Ask.
- Re-run the audit and confirm the Question headings check passes.
Why do question headings work?
A question heading is a heading written as the question that the following paragraph answers. People now type or speak full questions to search engines and AI assistants, and these systems split pages into passages, using headings as the labels. When the label is the question, the match is direct. Voice assistants answer in one sentence, and that sentence usually comes from the passage right under a matching heading.
How do I rewrite headings without sounding forced?
Turn a topic label into the question a visitor would ask: "Pricing" becomes "How much does it cost?" and "Setup" becomes "How do I set it up?". Keep each one under about 70 characters and use the same words your customers use. Then make the first sentence a complete answer. Aim for at least 2 question headings on every guide and 4 to 6 on long pages, and leave short labels where a question would feel unnatural. Test the result by reading only the headings aloud: they should sound like a conversation a customer might have with a helpful assistant.
How much does this check matter?
- This check is worth about 1.5% of the overall score.
- A finished report is reused for 24 hours before you can re-analyze it.
- Each page is fetched with a timeout of 10 seconds, and HTML larger than 2 MB is not audited.
What else do people ask?
- Should every heading be a question?
- No. Use questions where the section answers one. Mixing question and statement headings keeps the page natural.
- Do question headings help classic SEO?
- They can help match long, conversational queries and win featured snippets, as well as helping assistants split the page into passages.