Use headings for SEO

Headings serve two essential purposes: they help human readers navigate your content and signal content structure to search engines and AI. Effective headings make your content more accessible and improve your SEO and AI Optimization.

What you’ll learn:

• The importance of headings for both visitors and search engines.
• How to structure heading levels properly.
• Best practices for using keywords in headings.
• How to create scannable content that keeps readers engaged.

When people visit websites, they rarely read every word. Instead, they scan content to find the information they need. Headings help visitors by:

• Breaking up large blocks of text.
• Providing visual rest points for the reader’s eyes.
• Signaling what each section contains.
• Making content scannable for those in a hurry.

For search engines, headings help to:

• Understand the structure of your content.
• Identify the main topics and subtopics.
• Determine the relevance of your content to search queries.

Headings follow a hierarchical structure from H1 (most important) to H6 (least important). In HTML code, these appear as <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, and so on.

• H1 – Reserved for your page or post title. On WordPress sites, this is automatically applied to the title. Use only one H1 per page.
• H2 – Use for main sections of your content (like chapters in a book).
• H3 – Use for subsections within H2 sections.
• H4-H6 – Used less frequently, primarily for deeply structured content.

When writing headings in WordPress, you can set the heading level in the Heading block‘s toolbar:

The outline panel of the WordPress editor will flag any issues with your heading structure that you can fix.

Including relevant keywords in your headings helps search engines understand your content’s focus:

• Try to include your primary keyword in at least one H2 heading.
• Use variations of your keywords in other headings where natural.
• Avoid forcing keywords where they don’t belong.
• Keep headings descriptive and helpful for readers.

Remember: Balance is key—optimize for both readers and search engines. Even the best SEO won’t help if readers leave your site because the content is difficult to read or navigate.

One of the most effective ways to optimize your headings for AI-powered search is to phrase your H2 (and sometimes H3) headings as the actual questions your audience is searching for.

Headings written as questions, followed by a paragraph that directly answers them, are more likely to be picked up and cited by AI search engines. For example, instead of “Sourdough tips,” use “How do you make sourdough bread from scratch?” This tells AI engines that the content beneath it directly answers that question — increasing the chance of it being surfaced in AI Overviews and featured snippets.

Why this works:

• Google’s AI Overviews and featured snippets look for pages that explicitly answer a question — a heading phrased as a question tells them exactly what follows is an answer.
• Voice assistants (Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa) answer spoken questions by matching them to question-format headings.
• It naturally aligns your headings with the questions people type into “People also ask” (see Lesson 5).

When to use question headings:

• Use them for informational sections where someone might search “what is X,” “how to Y,” or “why does Z.”
• Don’t force them where they feel unnatural — a product feature list or step-by-step tutorial may work better with descriptive headings.
• Aim for at least 1–2 question-format H2s per page on informational content.

Review the content you selected earlier and enhance its heading structure:

1. Ensure your page has a title (it’s automatically set as an H1 in the WordPress editor).
2. Break content into logical sections with H2 headings.
3. Use H3 headings for subsections where needed.
4. Include relevant keywords naturally in your headings.
5. Make headings descriptive so readers can understand the content that follows.
6. Review your H2 headings. Can any of them be rewritten as questions that your audience might actually type into Google? Try rewriting at least one H2 as a question and place a direct 1–2 sentence answer immediately below it.

Well-structured headings improve your SEO and AI Optimization and create a better experience for your visitors, leading to longer visit times and better engagement with your content.