Content strategy
Topics your buyers actually research
- Understand
Stage 2: Understand
Heading outline check
The H1 to H6 tree of a page, with skipped levels, empty headings and the length of each section, to check the structure before you publish.
Free to use. No login, nothing stored.
What it checks
Understand- Heading tree in document order
- Skipped levels, multiple H1s and empty headings
- Word count per section
- Whether each H2 section opens with a direct sentence that repeats the heading terms
Method question for this stage: Do machines know what each page and brand is?
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Results
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- Info
The outline, then one row per rule
Heading tree with word counts, then: one H1, skipped levels, empty headings, long headings, thin sections, duplicates, whether the H1 is followed by text, and how many H2 sections open with a sentence that repeats the heading terms.
Structure helps a page be understood; it says nothing about how good the content is. Stage 2 of the method.
How we check
The rules this tool tests, and where they come from
A result is a check against a published rule, not a prediction. Every row shows its working.
Rules and sources
Links go to the operator's or standards body's own documentation. We do not link to third-party summaries.
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Next step
Fix what it finds
This check belongs to the Understand stage of the Crawl-to-Citation Method. The service below covers the fix; the Diagnostic ranks it against everything else.
Most engagements start with the Search Visibility Diagnostic ($2,500).
It covers all six method stages, so what this tool finds is ranked against everything else before you commit to any work.
Book the diagnosticHeading questions
What the rows mean, and where the rules come from.
Still have questions? Book a callDoes Google require exactly one H1?
No. Google has said its systems cope with several H1s or none. The one-H1 rule here comes from the W3C headings tutorial and from plain usefulness: one main heading tells readers, screen-reader users and crawlers what the page is about in one place. We flag it as a Fail because it is cheap to fix and removes ambiguity, not because a ranking depends on it.
Why does the tool read the server HTML rather than the rendered page?
Crawlers and AI assistants read the HTML your server sends first; some render JavaScript later, some never do. If a heading only exists after a script runs, this tool will not see it and neither will a crawler that skips rendering. If the outline here differs from what you see in the browser, that difference is itself the finding.
What counts as a thin section?
A heading with fewer than 40 words beneath it, counting any subsections. Short sections are fine when the heading is a container for subsections or a short list; the row is an Info, not a Warning, so you can judge it yourself. Headings with no text at all under them before the next heading are a different case, covered by the H1-followed-by-text row.
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