Is it okay to skip heading levels for example h2 to h4, or h1 to h3. are there any implications in SEO, does it impact site ranking or indexing, and why do some developers skip heading levels? Are there any scenarios where skipping heading it okay?
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Duplicate of ux.stackexchange.com/q/49111– RenCommented Sep 25 at 13:23
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1No, don't skip heading levels. See: w3.org/WAI/tutorials/page-structure/headings– jazZRoCommented Sep 25 at 13:30
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1 Answer
Heading levels are an accessibility feature, so it's not a great idea to skip them. They're also required to be used in-order if you want your site to get basic WCAG level 'A' (and really, you actually want to be AA).
If a site fails basic accessibility checks then that means it's not built to standards. And good SEO requires sites be built to standards (Google doesn't want to suggest broken sites to people otherwise they'll lose trust in the results Google suggests in future).
As to why they're important:
People using screenreaders will have the headings read out, and if they want to delve into a particular section then they may explore that area in more detail, but if the headings are out of order they may not know there's more content there and will miss out.
For a simplistic example:
<body>
<h1>Jackets</h1>
<h2>Winter Jackets</h2>
<h3>Mens</h3>
<h3>Womens</h3>
<h2>Summer Jackets</h2>
<h3>Mens</h3>
<h3>Womens</h3>
</body>
Lets assume this screenreader works by the user pressing '1' on the keyboard and it jumps to the H1 and reads it out, if they press '2' it will jump to the next H2, '3' jumps to the next H3 etc...
Now, someone reading this with a screenreader would be told the pages is called 'JACKETS' and if interested will have the headings read out. They're interested in Summer stuff so when they hear the H2 of 'Winter Jackets' they'll skip to the next H2 and hear 'Summer Jackets'. That's the one they're interested in so they'll go to the H3 to hear how the section is split up. They'll hear 'Mens' but as a woman will not be interested in that so they'll try the next H3 'Womens' and bingo! That's what they're after.
Now, if you got rid of the H2s and just had the H3s then when they hit the page and try to find what subheadings there are they will find that no H2s get read out, so they'll assume there's nothing useful on this page and will leave.
It's possible they'll try jumping to any H3s at this point, but why would they? They don't think the page is split into multiple areas anyway.
Why would you want to skip headings anyway?
You can have a variety of styles for your H2 / H3s etc, so just create smaller variants for different pages.
