Spoke
Question-shaped headings
A heading tells a reader what's coming and tells a machine what the passage is about. Those used to pull against each other. Mostly they don't anymore.
Long-standing practice with visible results in featured snippets. No platform publishes a heading specification, so the specifics are what practitioners agree on.
A heading does two jobs. It tells a reader what's coming, and it tells a machine what the passage underneath is about.
Those used to pull against each other, because the headings that read best are often the ones that give away least. The tension mostly resolves if you accept one rule: say what the section answers instead of gesturing at its theme.
Should every heading on a page be a question?
No. Use a question heading where the section genuinely answers a question somebody asks. Use a plain descriptive heading everywhere else.
A page where every heading has been forced into a question reads as manipulated, and sections that aren't answers don't become answers by being retitled. A realistic mix is a handful of real question headings carrying the quotable answers, with descriptive headings structuring the rest.
Use their words, not yours
Every firm has internal vocabulary clients never use.
You say "matter intake." They say "how do I start a case." A vendor says "entity resolution." The buyer says "why does Google think we're two different companies."
Headings written in internal vocabulary are invisible to the people they're for. That's the oldest lesson in keyword research and it carries straight into AI search — because spoken questions are more colloquial than typed ones, not less.
Match the shape of the question
The question word matters more than it looks. It signals what kind of answer somebody wants.
| Question word | What they want | What your answer must open with |
|---|---|---|
| What is… | A definition | A definition, in one sentence |
| How do I… | A procedure | The first action, or the shortest route |
| Should I… | A recommendation | A recommendation, with the condition |
| Why does… | A cause | The cause, not the background |
| Does X… | Yes or no | Yes or no, then the qualification |
A "should I" question answered with a definition has failed, however accurate the definition is.
That's the most common mismatch, and it happens because writers are more comfortable explaining than recommending.
The clever-heading problem
Writers love headings like "The map pack is not your website" or "Schema won't save you." They're memorable and they carry an argument.
They're also unmatchable. Nobody asks either of those.
The fix is usually to keep the idea and move it. Use the plain question as the heading and let the sharp sentence be the answer underneath. The reader still gets it, and the passage becomes findable.
Keep the heading honest
A question heading creates an expectation that the section answers it.
If the honest answer is that nobody knows, write the heading anyway and let the answer say so. We do that repeatedly on this site, because "nobody outside the platform knows" is a real answer and readers deserve it more than they deserve a confident guess.
What doesn't work is a question heading over a section that never gets around to answering. That's the pattern that teaches readers to distrust the format.
More in AEO
Answer-first writing
The first sentence under a question heading is the only part guaranteed to be read, quoted or extracted. Here is how to write one that works with nothing around it, and the before-and-after that shows the difference.
Extractable formatting
Six steps in a paragraph and six steps in a list carry the same information to a reader. To a machine they're nothing alike, and that difference decides whether you get quoted precisely or approximately.
Snippets & voice
Before AI answers there were snippets and voice assistants, which also had to pick one answer instead of listing ten. Everything this section teaches was worked out against those.
Question markup
FAQ rich results were deprecated in May 2026. The FAQPage type wasn't. Knowing which of those is true saves you from the stale advice and from the overcorrection.