What does the heading hierarchy check verify?
It collects your page's headings and checks they form a sensible outline:
- Logical order — H1 → H2 → H3 without skipping levels (no jumping from H2 straight to H4).
- Enough structure — sufficient sub-headings to break the content into scannable sections, one topic per section.
- Descriptive headings — headings that actually label what each section contains.
Three or more headings in a logical order with no skipped levels passes; skipped levels or too few headings is a warning; effectively no sub-structure on substantial content is a fail.
How is it evaluated, and how is it scored?
GEObubbly collects the page's headings, verifies their order and that no levels are skipped, and assesses whether there's enough sectioning for the content length. It's a core Content Structure & Quality check worth 2 points, because clean hierarchy serves accessibility, readability and machine extraction at once.
Why heading hierarchy matters for SEO and GEO
Headings are the page's table of contents. A good structure goes H1 → H2 → H3 without skipping levels (don't jump from H2 straight to H4) and uses enough sub-headings to break content into scannable sections — one topic per section. This serves two audiences. Screen-reader users navigate by headings, so a clean outline is an accessibility win. And machines build a structural model from headings: well-organised sections with descriptive headings make it far easier for a search or AI engine to understand the page and extract a relevant chunk. Common failures are skipped levels (often a styling shortcut where someone picks a heading tag for its size) and a long page with almost no sub-headings — a wall of text. Both reduce how cleanly the page can be parsed and quoted. Use heading tags for structure, not appearance, and label each section clearly. Clean hierarchy underpins extractability and works with a single strong H1 across Content Structure & Quality and GEO / LLM Readiness.