Kuroma
Heading Hierarchy
What this check reads on your page
Every heading a reader can see is recorded in document order, skipping headings inside the nav, footer or a sidebar aside (or an element carrying the matching ARIA role), headings hidden with display:none or the hidden attribute, empty ones and exact duplicates. The check credits a single h1, then asks whether the body is divided into enough sections for its length, counting a section as a heading with at least twenty-five words of text under it and expecting roughly one per three hundred words. It then checks that the outline is well formed: it starts at h1 or h2, never skips a level, and no h3 appears without an h2 above it.
Our verdict on the evidence
Evidence-backed Heading-scoped sections match how retrieval systems chunk pages, so clean hierarchy helps at the retrieval and chunking stage even though it is neutral at the answer-generation stage.
Anthropic contextual retrieval (self-contained passages cut retrieval failures) · GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (arXiv 2311.09735)
Retrieval systems cut a page into chunks at its headings, so a clean outline decides which passage an engine can find and how much context travels with it. Headings do not change how an answer is written once a passage has been retrieved.
What it is worth
11% of On-Page Content, which is 2.8 points of the overall 100.
How audited pages score on it
Based on 30,738 audited pages.
The median page scores 66, and the middle half of pages score between 45 and 79.
- Good (75 to 100)12,368 (40%)
- Moderate (50 to 74)9,768 (32%)
- Needs work (25 to 49)4,703 (15%)
- Critical (0 to 24)3,899 (13%)
28% of audited pages score below 50 on it.
Where it fails most and least
Industries that fail it most
- Gaming: 42% of 817 audited pages fail it
- Publishing / News Media: 38% of 905 audited pages fail it
- Streaming / Video: 37% of 756 audited pages fail it
- Marketplace: 34% of 211 audited pages fail it
- Banking / Neo-banking: 33% of 363 audited pages fail it
Industries that fail it least
- Cybersecurity: 8% of 108 audited pages fail it
- AI / Machine Learning: 8% of 477 audited pages fail it
- MarTech / Marketing Platform: 9% of 201 audited pages fail it
- SaaS / Cloud Software: 12% of 188 audited pages fail it
- Enterprise Software / ERP: 16% of 114 audited pages fail it
How to fix it
- Use exactly one h1 for the page title and demote any others to h2.
- Add an h2 for each distinct point, with sixty to three hundred words beneath it; a heading with fewer than twenty-five words under it, link text included, earns a quarter of the credit.
- Never jump from h1 to h3; nest each level under the one above it.
- Put section headings inside the article content rather than in the menu, footer or sidebar, where the check sets them aside.
What has changed in this factor
No version names this factor in its per-factor record.