How to fix heading hierarchy so levels never skip
Headings must step down one level at a time, from H1 to H2 to H3, so the page outline is machine readable. Skipped levels, such as an H2 followed by an H4, confuse screen readers and crawlers. Choose each level for its place in the outline, never for how large it looks.
By ratemysite.ai editorial team. Updated .
How do you fix it?
- List the headings of the page in order, using a browser extension or by searching the source for h1 to h6.
- Find every jump of more than one level, such as an H2 followed directly by an H4.
- Change the lower heading to the next level down, or add the missing parent heading if a section really is missing.
- Use CSS classes to make a heading look bigger or smaller instead of changing its level.
- Re-run the audit and confirm the Heading hierarchy check passes.
What is a heading hierarchy?
A heading hierarchy is the nested outline made by H1 to H6 tags, like the chapters and sub-chapters of a book. Browsers, screen readers and crawlers build a table of contents from it. When a level is skipped, the outline has a hole, and a blind visitor who navigates by headings hears a section that seems to have no parent. The WebAIM screen reader survey has found for years that most users rely on headings to move around a page.
How do I repair a broken outline?
Write the outline on paper first: one H1, then H2 for each main section, then H3 for the parts inside those. Compare it with the page. Most breaks come from page builders that offer a heading size picker, which pushes editors to choose H4 because it looks smaller. Swap the tag to the correct level and style it with a CSS class. Keep to about 3 levels on most pages; deeper nesting usually means the content should be split into separate pages.
How much does this check matter?
- This check is worth about 1% 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?
- Is it wrong to go from an H3 back up to an H2?
- No. Going up any number of levels is fine when a new section starts. Only skipping downward, such as H2 to H4, breaks the outline.
- Do headings help AI search?
- Yes. Assistants split pages into passages by heading, so a clean outline makes each section easier to find and quote on its own.