Fix heading hierarchy — no skipped levels

45 min Impact: medium Effort: medium ✓ Scan-verified — no manual checkbox

Headings (H1 through H6) should nest in logical order — an H1, then H2s under it, then H3s under relevant H2s — like a document outline; skipping levels (H1 straight to H4) or using headings purely for visual styling instead of structure confuses both accessibility tools and search engines trying to understand your content's organization.

Jumping from an H2 straight to an H4 breaks the outline screen readers and search engines both rely on to understand your page structure.

How to fix it

1

Map your current heading structure

Use a browser extension or view source to see the actual H1-H6 sequence on your key pages.
2

Fix skipped levels

Don't jump from an H2 directly to an H4 — nest through H3 first, even if you need to adjust the visual styling to match.
3

Stop using headings purely for font size

If something is styled like a heading but isn't actually structural (a big bold price, a large call-to-action), style it with CSS instead of an actual heading tag.

Common mistakes

Design teams often pick a heading level based on how big the text should look rather than its actual structural role — this creates a heading hierarchy that looks right visually but is nonsensical to a screen reader or crawler reading the actual tag structure.

How you'll know it's done

Heading levels nest logically with no skipped levels, and headings are used for genuine document structure, not just visual sizing.

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Fix it, then re-scan — the check confirms itself. No manual checkbox, the scan is the truth.

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Fix heading hierarchy — no skipped levels

How to fix it

Common mistakes

How you'll know it's done

Related checks

H.I.V.E. checks this automatically