Heading Structure Checker
Enter a URL to get the full H1 to H6 outline of the page and a list of structural problems.
Why heading structure matters
Headings are the table of contents of a page. Readers scan them to decide whether to stay, screen reader users jump between them to move around, and search engines use them to understand which topics a page covers and how the sections relate. None of that works well when heading tags are chosen for their font size instead of their meaning.
What the checker flags
No H1 or several H1s
The H1 should state what the page is about. A missing H1 often means the visible headline is a styled div. Several H1s usually come from the theme: a logo in an H1 on every page, or widget titles marked up as H1.
Skipped levels
An H2 followed directly by an H4 is a skipped level. Going back up (from H4 to H2) is fine, because that just starts a new section. The tool only flags jumps that go more than one level deeper.
Empty headings
Page builders sometimes leave empty heading tags behind as spacers. They are announced by screen readers as headings with no content. If a heading contains only an image, the tool shows the image alt text instead and says so.
Very long headings
Headings longer than 70 characters are flagged. That is not an official limit. It is the point where a heading stops working as a label and starts reading like a sentence that belongs in a paragraph.
A good outline in practice
- One H1 that matches the search intent of the page.
- H2s for the main sections. A person who reads only the H2s should understand what the page covers.
- H3s for steps or sub-topics inside an H2, and deeper levels only when the content needs them.
- Descriptive wording. "Pricing for teams" beats "More info".
Use the copy button to paste the outline into a content brief or a ticket for your developer. For the rest of the on-page basics, run the meta tags analyzer, and check text balance with the keyword density checker.
After you restructure a page, Google needs to recrawl it before anything changes in search. TurboIndex can submit updated URLs from your sitemap for you.
Questions and answers
Is it bad to have more than one H1?
Not for Google. Google has said publicly that its systems handle pages with multiple H1s, or none at all. It is still worth fixing in most cases, because the cause is usually a template that wraps the logo or a sidebar title in an H1, and because a single H1 gives screen reader users a clear starting point.
Do skipped heading levels hurt SEO?
There is no known ranking penalty for jumping from H2 to H4. The cost is on the accessibility side: people who move through a page by headings with a screen reader rely on the levels to understand what belongs to what. A clean outline also makes it easier for search engines to understand the sections of a long page.
Should the H1 be the same as the title tag?
It can be, and it should at least cover the same topic. Many sites use a slightly longer H1 for readers and a tighter title tag for search results. When the two disagree strongly, Google is more likely to rewrite your title in results, and it sometimes picks the H1 as the replacement.
The tool found no headings but I can see them on my page. Why?
Either the headings are divs or spans styled to look like headings, or they are added by JavaScript after the page loads. This tool reads the HTML sent by the server and does not run scripts.