By Iliass El Barhoumi · Published · Last updated
How is heading hierarchy scored?
Heading hierarchy is worth 9 of 100 points, 9 of the 60 in the Selected lever, which asks “Is there a passage worth quoting?” The engine scores it with these rules:
- 3 points for exactly one H1.
- 2 points for never skipping a level, such as an H2 followed directly by an H4.
- 4 points for descriptive headings, scored as the share that are not generic labels such as “Introduction”, “Overview”, “Details” or “Conclusion”.
- Pages with fewer than 2 headings are not scored on the descriptive share, because the ratio is too noisy.
What does a pass and a fail look like?
| Verdict | Example |
|---|---|
| Pass | An H1 “How to descale an espresso machine”, then H2s “How often should you descale?”, “What to use instead of descaler” and “Step-by-step descaling”. Each chunk is labelled by its heading. |
| Fail | Two H1s from a theme template, then “Introduction”, “Details” and “Conclusion”. Every chunk an engine stores is labelled with a word that says nothing about it. |
How do you fix heading hierarchy?
In the order worth doing it:
- Keep one H1 that states the page’s topic; demote any second H1 the theme adds to a styled paragraph.
- Rename generic headings to say what the section contains, ideally as the question it answers.
- Fix skipped levels so the outline reads H1, H2, H3 in order.
A scan reports the evidence behind the verdict, such as the sections, paragraphs or tokens that failed, and the fix prompt hands the same evidence to a coding agent so it can make the change for you.
Related checks in the Selected lever
- What is answer-first writing? — 13 points
- What makes a passage extractable by an AI engine? — 10 points
- Does formatting change whether AI quotes your page? — 9 points
- Why do AI engines prefer pages with numbers in them? — 8 points
- Does an FAQ section help you get cited? — 7 points
- Which schema types help with AI citation? — 4 points
Frequently asked questions
Should headings be phrased as questions?
Where the section genuinely answers one, yes. A question heading matches the way people phrase prompts, and it also earns points in the Q&A structure check.
Does having two H1 tags hurt AI visibility?
It makes the page’s topic ambiguous, which costs points here and in topical focus. Many themes add a second H1 for the site name; changing that one element usually fixes it site-wide.