Heading Checker

Why heading structure matters for SEO

A heading checker catches the H1–H6 structure issues a quick manual scan often misses. Headings aren't just visual formatting. They're how Google figures out what a page is about and how sections relate to each other. Skip from H1 to H3 and you've told crawlers (and screen readers) that your content structure doesn't make sense. One missing H1 can quietly tank a page's topical relevance.

This H1 checker scans every heading tag (H1 through H6) and maps out the full hierarchy tree. Duplicates, skipped levels, and empty tags: all flagged instantly. If your heading structure has SEO problems, this tool makes them impossible to miss.

Heading hierarchy and SEO

Google relies on heading structure to understand your page. Your H1 sets the topic and your H2s define main sections, each one covering a distinct subtopic. If Google can't follow this hierarchy, it falls back on keyword matching and may misread what the page is actually about. Well-structured headings also produce better featured snippets because Google can lift a clean section as the answer to a query.

Accessibility and heading structure

For screen reader users, headings are the navigation. Most screen readers let users jump from heading to heading with a single keystroke, the same way sighted users scroll. If your page skips from H1 to H4, screen reader navigation breaks. The European Accessibility Act (EAA) came into force in June 2025 and requires public-facing digital services in the EU to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA, which explicitly covers heading hierarchy. Failing that is now a compliance issue, not just a best practice.

Common heading errors this tool finds

The big ones. Multiple H1s on a single page. Heading tags used for styling (H4 for "make this small and bold"). Skipped levels where the HTML jumps from H2 straight to H5. Empty heading tags left by a broken template. Every issue shows up in the hierarchy tree for quick review.

How to check headings across a whole site

One page at a time is fine when you already know which page is broken. The harder question is which of your 300 pages has no H1 at all, and a per-page checker cannot answer that. Switch the tool to Batch, give it a sitemap URL, and it runs the same rules over every URL it finds, up to 250 per run.

What comes back is a sortable table: score, H1 count, total headings, and the single biggest problem on each page. Sort by score and the worst pages rise to the top. Export the lot as CSV if you would rather work through it in a spreadsheet. No sitemap? Paste the URLs by hand instead.

Batch reads the raw server HTML rather than starting a headless browser for every URL, which is what keeps a 250-page crawl down to a couple of minutes. Pages that come back with no headings at all get a second pass through the renderer, so a client-rendered page still reports what single mode would say.

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