Headings do more than make text bigger. They define the outline of your page — the structure search engines and screen readers use to understand how your content is organised. A clean heading hierarchy is one of the cheapest on-page wins there is, and one of the most commonly botched.
Why headings matter
Google uses headings to understand the topics and sub-topics on a page and how they relate. A well-structured document with descriptive headings is easier to parse, easier to feature as a snippet, and easier for people to scan. Headings aren't a huge direct ranking factor, but they shape comprehension — and comprehension is what ranking is built on.
One H1, or many?
The classic rule is "one H1 per page", and it's still the safest default: your H1 is the page's title, so having one makes your primary topic unambiguous. That said, Google's John Mueller has confirmed that multiple H1s won't hurt you — HTML5 technically allows one per sectioning element. My advice: use a single H1 unless you have a specific structural reason not to. It's the option that never backfires.
Don't skip levels
Headings should nest like an outline: H1 → H2 → H3, without jumping. Don't skip from an H2 straight to an H4 because you liked the smaller font — style with CSS, structure with the right tag.
<h1>Page title</h1>
<h2>Major section</h2>
<h3>Sub-point</h3>
<h3>Sub-point</h3>
<h2>Major section</h2>A skipped level is invisible to sighted users but breaks the logical structure for search engines and assistive tech alike.
Headings and keywords
Write headings for humans first. It's natural for your H1 and a few H2s to contain your primary and related keywords — that's a good sign your content is on-topic — but don't cram every heading with the same phrase. Descriptive, varied headings that answer real sub-questions will do more for you than keyword-stuffed ones, and they set you up to win featured snippets.
Headings are accessibility
Screen-reader users navigate by jumping between headings. A logical H1–H6 structure is literally how they move through your page. This is the rare case where the SEO best practice and the accessibility best practice are the same thing — fix it once, win twice.
Checking your outline
The fastest way to spot problems is to look at the heading outline in isolation, stripped of all the styling. SEO Inspector renders your full H1–H6 tree as an indented outline and flags the common faults — a missing H1, multiple H1s, or a skipped level — so a broken structure is obvious at a glance. Pair it with a clear title tag and your page's topic is unmistakable.
