Check your heading structure, H1 to H6
Paste a URL and see the full heading outline of the page, with four structural faults flagged: no H1, more than one H1, a skipped level and an empty heading. Headings are how a screen reader user navigates your page as well as how a search engine reads it, which makes this an accessibility check as much as an SEO one. No account needed.
What this checks
The tool requests the URL you enter, reads the HTML the server sends back, and collects every H1 to H6 in the order they appear in the document. It then applies four rules to that list. There is no model and no scoring judgement anywhere in it — it is parsing, so the same page gives the same answer every time you run it.
- Missing H1 — the page has no H1 at all.
- Multiple H1s — the page has more than one. Worth a look rather than an automatic fix; see the FAQ below.
- Skipped levels — a heading sits more than one level below the heading before it, such as an H2 followed directly by an H4.
- Empty headings — a heading tag containing no text, usually a leftover from a template or an icon-only heading.
One caveat worth stating plainly. Because the tool reads the server-rendered HTML, headings that your JavaScript writes into the page after it loads will not appear in the outline. That is a limit of the method, not a verdict on your page.
How to read your results
No H1
The one result on this list worth acting on today. An H1 is the page telling everyone, in one line, what it is. Without it a screen reader user landing on the page has nothing to orient against, and a search engine falls back to the title tag and the body copy to work out the subject. Add one, make it describe the page rather than the company.
More than one H1
Not the ranking disaster it is often written up as. HTML5 permits an H1 within each sectioning element, and Google has said it handles multiple H1s without difficulty. The reason to keep it to one is navigational: headings are a table of contents for anyone not reading top to bottom, and a table of contents with four titles is not much of a table of contents.
Skipped levels
An H2 followed by an H4 tells a screen reader there is a missing level of nesting between them. It is not a hard WCAG failure, but it sits squarely under the advisory technique on organising a page with headings, and most accessibility audits will raise it. In practice a skipped level almost always means someone picked a heading tag for its font size. Fix the CSS, not the semantics.
Empty headings
A heading with no text is announced as a heading to assistive technology and then says nothing. Usually it is a decorative divider, a slider control or a template block left in place. Either give it text or make it a div.
What to fix first
- Any page with no H1. Nothing else here comes close in importance.
- Empty headings. Quick to remove and never useful to keep.
- Skipped levels. Usually one CSS class away from being correct.
- H1s that repeat your brand name. The reader already knows whose site they are on. Use the line to say what this page covers.
- Headings that describe nothing. “Our approach” and “Why us” are labels, not summaries. A heading that states the point of the section underneath it is easier to skim and easier for an AI answer engine to lift.
That last point is doing more work than it used to. Answer engines pull the passage that most directly addresses a question, and clear headings are what mark where each passage begins and ends. Our guide to answer engine optimisation covers how that selection works, and the meta title and description checker covers the tags that sit above the page rather than inside it.
Frequently asked questions
- Is more than one H1 actually a problem?
- Less than it used to be. The HTML5 outline permits an H1 inside each sectioning element, and Google has said repeatedly that multiple H1s do not cause it trouble. The stronger argument is the accessibility one: someone using a screen reader jumps between headings to work out where they are, and a page with four H1s gives them four equally weighted answers to the question of what the page is about. We flag it as something to look at, not as a fault to panic over.
- Why do the headings on my page not show up?
- The tool reads the HTML the server sends back. If your headings are written into the page by JavaScript after it loads, they are not in that HTML and the outline will look short or empty. Search engines do render JavaScript, so this is not automatically an SEO problem, but it does mean the tool is showing you the pre-render state rather than the finished page. View source on your own page to confirm.
- Does heading structure affect rankings?
- Indirectly. Google has described headings as a helpful signal for understanding what a page covers rather than a ranking factor to optimise. What headings genuinely do is make a page easier to read, easier to skim, and easier to quote from, and those are the things that decide whether the page earns its place.
- Does this check every page on my site?
- No. It fetches the one URL you give it, once. Checking every page and then fixing what it finds rather than listing it is what the paid ClimbrIQ plan does.
- How many checks can I run?
- Thirty per hour from the same connection. That is a guard against automated hammering, not a paywall in disguise. If you hit it, the limit clears within the hour.
- Do I need an account?
- No. The outline and the flags are free and need no signup. Entering your email sends a longer written report covering the issues found, a suggested H1 to H3 outline for the page, and rewrites for the headings that need them.