Winning Featured Snippets: A Blog Post Header Tag Overhaul
Client: A B2B SaaS company in the “Human Resources” (HR) technology space.
Challenges We Faced
The client’s blog had 100+ articles and got decent traffic, but was “stuck” and failing to generate leads:
“Stuck” on Page 1
Many of their high-value blog posts were “stuck” in positions 4-10, just below the Featured Snippet.
No Featured Snippets
A Full Header Tag Audit showed their articles had a poor structure. They used H2s for “fluffy” titles, not for answering questions.
High Bounce Rate
UI/UX & Readability Analysis showed users were “bouncing” because the content was a “wall of text” with no clear subheadings.
Poor H1 Tag Optimization
Their H1s (titles) were creative, but didn’t include the primary keyword.
Weak Internal Linking
Blog posts didn’t link to related articles or product pages, reducing time on site and lead opportunities.
Win Featured Snippets
“Is your blog ‘stuck’ on page 1? Our Header Tags Optimization for blogs will restructure your content to win Featured Snippets.”
Our Approach – How We Solved These Challenges
Comprehensive Header Tag Audit
We used Screaming Frog to crawl all 100+ blog posts, identifying all pages with missing, duplicate, or non-sequential headers.
Competitor Analysis
We used Content Optimization Tools (like SurferSEO) to analyze the header tag structure of the #1 ranking, Featured Snippet-winning competitors.
H2 & H3 Subheading Strategy
This was the key. We rewrote the headers on their top 20 posts to directly answer “People Also Ask” questions.
Old H2: “A New Way of Thinking”
New H2: “What is the Employee Onboarding Process?”
H1 Tag Optimization
We rewrote all H1s to include the primary keyword (e.g., “What is Employee Onboarding? A Complete Guide”).
Results
| Metric | Before | After | Growth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Featured Snippet & PAA Rankings | 2 | 18 | +800% |
| Organic Traffic (to optimized posts) | 12,000/mo | 32,000/mo | +166% |
| Blog-to-Demo Conversion Rate | 0.2% | 0.7% | +250% |
Free Header Tag Audit
“Not sure why your competitors are outranking you? Claim a Free Header Tag Audit and let our header tag optimization agency find your errors!”
Advice for Marketers & Brand Owners
- Your H2s and H3s are for answers, not just titles. A good H2 & H3 Subheading Strategy directly targets “People Also Ask” questions.
- To win Featured Snippets, you must structure your content in a way that is easy for Google to “lift” (e.g., Q&A, lists).
- A logical header structure (H1 -> H2 -> H3) is critical for Accessibility (a11y) and for search engines.
- A Full Header Tag Audit using Screaming Frog is the fastest way to find your site’s structural problems.
Extra Factors That Made It Work
- Using SurferSEO to reverse-engineer the competitors’ H2/H3 structure was the key insight.
- The new, logical structure improved “Time on Page” and reduced “Bounce Rate,” sending strong positive user signals to Google.
