Free Header Tag Checker

Heading hierarchy: the outline a page hands to everyone who reads it.

Readers skim it, screen readers navigate by it, search engines and AI assistants use it to tell one section from the next. Here is what heading tags are, what Google actually says about them, and why regulated firms have more riding on them than most.

What H1 to H6 are

HTML has six heading elements, <h1> through <h6>. In SEO conversation they are called header tags or heading tags, and the two names mean the same thing. The number is a rank, not a size: an H1 names the page's subject, each H2 opens a major section under it, each H3 a subsection inside an H2, and so on down. Most pages never need anything below H3; a long guide might reach H4.

Read in order, a page's headings should work as its table of contents. If you copied only the headings into a document, a stranger should be able to say what the page covers and how it is organised.

<h1>Roth conversions, explained</h1>
  <h2>Who can convert?</h2>
  <h2>How the five-year rule works</h2>
    <h3>Conversions versus contributions</h3>
  <h2>What a conversion costs in tax</h2>
  <h2>Important disclosures</h2>

Header tags, the header element and HTTP headers

The word "header" covers three unrelated things, and search results mix them up constantly. Someone looking for a header checker is often after the third one.

The overlap causes real mistakes. A theme that puts an H1 inside the site <header> region, usually wrapping the logo, gives every page on the site the same H1: the company name. The page's actual subject then arrives as a second H1, or as an H2.

The rules of a clean outline

Four habits make an outline work. One H1 that names the topic. No skipped levels: an H4 directly under an H2 tells a screen reader user that a level exists which does not. No empty headings: page builders leave behind headings with no text, which read aloud as "heading level two" followed by silence. Headings for structure, never for styling: if a line should look large but does not open a section, it needs a CSS class, not a heading tag.

The checker on this page tests the top of that outline: the H1, and on article pages, whether there are H2 sections at all. It does not yet walk H3 to H6 or flag a skipped level, so the rest of this list is for checking by eye. View the page source, search for <h, and read the matches in order.

One H1, and what Google actually says

Google's John Mueller has said more than once that several H1s on a page are not a problem for Google's systems, and Google's own SEO Starter Guide puts it plainly: headings in semantic order are "fantastic for screen readers, but from Google Search perspective, it doesn't matter if you're using them out of order." Anyone promising that header tags SEO work alone will move rankings is selling something Google has said it does not reward.

Verand flags more than one H1 anyway, for two reasons. One H1 is the clearest signal to a reader and to assistive technology of what the page is about. And a page with several H1s almost never chose them: they come from a logo, a menu label, a modal, a carousel or a template repeated on the page. The failing sample in the card above is our own homepage, where the animated product illustrations each carry an H1 and the count reaches ten. The fix there, as everywhere, is to demote the accidental ones.

The same thinking sits behind the H1-versus-title check. An H1 identical to the title tag is not an error. The title is what appears in a search result and the H1 is what greets the reader, so wording them differently lets each do its own job. Treat that row as a suggestion, not a defect.

Why bold text is not a heading

A line set in bold, or in a large font, looks like a heading to a sighted reader and is ordinary text to everything else. Screen readers do not list it in their headings menu. A browser's reader view does not treat it as a section break. Software that splits a page into sections has no reason to start a new one there. Visual weight and document structure are separate layers, and only the heading tag writes to the second one.

This is where regulated firms get caught. Disclosures are very often set as small bold text at the foot of a section: "Past performance does not guarantee future results," or "This is not legal advice." Because the line is not a heading and sits at the end of a block, it belongs structurally to whatever came before it, or to nothing. When a section is lifted out of the page on its own, the qualifying line is the easiest part to lose.

Headings as passage boundaries for AI answers

AI assistants rarely quote a whole page. Search and answer systems commonly break a page into passages and work with the passage that best matches the question, and headings are the natural place for those breaks: the heading tells the system, and the eventual reader, what the passage under it is about. A page with no headings is one long passage. A page whose headings are vague ("Overview," "More info") hands every passage an unhelpful label.

An example. A financial advisor's article has an H2, "Can I convert a traditional IRA to a Roth?", followed by two paragraphs that answer it, and a closing bold line noting that conversions are taxable and the reader should consult a tax professional. If that answer is extracted as a passage, the claim travels and the caveat may not, because nothing in the structure ties it to the answer. Two fixes help: put the essential qualifier inside the answer itself, and give standalone disclosures their own heading so they form a section of their own. Neither guarantees how any assistant uses the page. Both make the page say what it means in its structure, not only in its styling.

Headings, screen readers and accessibility

Screen reader users navigate by heading more than by any other means. One keystroke jumps to the next heading and another opens a list of every heading on the page, which works as a table of contents for someone who cannot skim. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines cover this in success criterion 1.3.1, Info and Relationships (Level A), which asks that structure shown visually is also present in the markup, and in 2.4.6, Headings and Labels (Level AA), which asks that headings describe their topic. Other checkers explain this well; it is table stakes.

What is different for a law firm, a medical practice or a financial advisor is the exposure. Web accessibility demand letters and lawsuits reach professional practices in the US, and missing or broken heading structure is among the first things an automated accessibility scan reports, because it is so easy to detect. This is risk awareness, not legal advice: a clean heading outline does not make a site accessible on its own, and a missing one is not by itself a violation. It is simply one of the cheapest defects to find and fix before someone else finds it.

Common mistakes

• The logo as the H1. Every page gets the company name as its main heading and the real topic drops a level.
• A second H1 you cannot see. Mobile menus, modals, cookie banners and slider templates often carry their own H1. Hidden or not, it is in the HTML, and this checker counts it.
• An H1 that is an image. A logo or banner image inside an H1 gives it no text. This checker reads the H1's text and reports an H1 with no words as missing.
• Skipping from H2 to H4 for size. The heading level was picked for how it looks. Style the H3 instead.
• Headings used as call-outs. "Call us today" or a phone number set as an H2 opens a fake section and pollutes the outline.
• Empty headings from page builders. A deleted block leaves its heading tag behind, invisible on the page and announced by a screen reader.
• Question headings with no FAQ markup. Three or more question-style headings on an article with no FAQPage schema is flagged on the article card here. The schema labels the questions and answers the page already shows; it adds nothing the page does not say. Google stopped showing FAQ rich results in Search in May 2026 and has since removed its FAQPage documentation (Google's changelog), so treat this as clarity for machines, not a search feature.
• Headings written in by JavaScript. If the headings exist only after scripts run, any tool that reads the served HTML, this one included, sees none. So do some crawlers.

What a good outline looks like

One H1 that says what the page is about, in words a reader would use. H2s that each name a question or a claim the section answers, so the list of H2s alone reads as a summary. H3s only where an H2 genuinely splits. Disclosures under their own heading, or written into the answer they qualify. No headings in the navigation, the footer or the sidebar unless they title a real region. Then run a heading structure checker after every redesign or theme update, because templates are where extra H1s come from.