Heading Hierarchy: One H1, Logical H2s and H3s — Getting the Outline Right

Headings are the document outline. They tell a crawler and a screen reader how the page is organized, and they give answer engines scannable sections to extract. A broken outline — multiple H1s or skipped levels — weakens all three.

The one-H1 rule

Each page should have a single H1 that matches the page's primary intent. The H1 is the top of the outline; everything else is a subsection of it. Multiple H1s flatten the structure and make it ambiguous which topic is primary.

Nest without skipping

1. Use H2 for each major section.
2. Use H3 for subsections of an H2.
3. Never jump from H1 to H3 — it breaks the document outline.
4. Keep headings descriptive; avoid generic labels like 'Overview'.

Headings and answer engines

Answer engines extract answers from sections under headings. A clear heading that matches a common question, followed by a concise paragraph answering it, increases the chance the passage is selected and cited.