# **🔍 What Is This Issue?**

Some customers notice that OTTO AI generates page headings that include quotation marks or placeholder text such as **"Optimized H2 Heading"** instead of clean, publish-ready copy. These malformed headings are not intentional and should not appear in your final content. This article explains why this happens and what you can do to resolve it.

# **💡 Why Does This Happen?**

Malformed headings with quotation marks or placeholder text typically occur for one of the following reasons:

- **Incomplete AI generation:** OTTO's content generation was interrupted mid-process — for example, by a slow network connection, a browser timeout, or navigating away from the page before generation finished.
- **Ambiguous or missing page context:** If the target page lacks a clear title, meta description, or focus keyword, OTTO may fall back to generic placeholder structures while it waits for more context to generate accurate headings.
- **Cached draft content:** A previous incomplete generation run may have saved a partial draft. When OTTO resumes, it can sometimes surface that cached output instead of starting fresh.
- **Template token bleed:** In rare cases, an internal prompt template token is exposed in the output instead of being replaced with real content. This is a known edge case that our engineering team actively monitors.

# **⚙️ How to Fix Malformed Headings**

1. **Navigate to OTTO AI.** In the left sidebar, click **OTTO SEO**, then open **Site Audit**, and select **Page Explorer**.
2. **Locate the affected page.** Find the page that contains the malformed headings in the Page Explorer list.
3. **Clear and regenerate.** Open the page's heading suggestions, delete any heading that contains quotation marks or placeholder text, and click **Regenerate** to prompt OTTO to produce a fresh version.
4. **Verify your focus keyword is set.** Before regenerating, confirm that the page has a focus keyword assigned. OTTO relies on this to produce contextually accurate headings. If it is missing, add it and then regenerate.
5. **Check your page title and meta description.** Ensure both fields are filled in. Sparse page context is a common trigger for placeholder output.
6. **Accept or edit the new suggestion.** Review the regenerated heading. If it looks correct, accept it. If you prefer custom wording, click the edit icon to adjust the text before applying it to the page.

# **🚫 How to Prevent This in the Future**

- **Always set a focus keyword** before running OTTO on a page. This gives the AI the context it needs to generate specific, accurate headings.
- **Stay on the page** until the generation progress indicator completes. Navigating away early can interrupt the process and leave partial output.
- **Use a stable internet connection** when running bulk OTTO optimizations. Timeouts during large batches are a common cause of incomplete generation.
- **Review suggestions before applying.** OTTO shows a preview of every heading before you publish. Make it a habit to scan for any text that looks generic or includes punctuation marks where there should be none.
- **Refresh and retry if generation stalls.** If the progress indicator freezes for more than 30 seconds, refresh the page and rerun the generation for that specific page rather than the entire batch.

# **📊 When to Escalate**

If you regenerate a heading multiple times and it continues to include quotation marks or placeholder text, this may indicate a deeper configuration issue with that specific page or a temporary platform-side anomaly. In that case, make a note of the affected page URL and the exact heading text that was generated — this information will help our team investigate quickly.

If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type **human teammate** to be connected with a member of our team.