How to v1.0, updated 2026-07-07

Headings and document structure

How to structure a page so people and engines can follow it, and lift from it.

Headings are the skeleton of a page. They tell a reader, and an engine, how the content is organised and what each part is about. Get the structure right and a page is easy to scan, easy to retrieve from, and easy to build a contents list from.

Use one h1, the page's main title. Use h2 for the main sections and h3 for the parts within them, in order, without skipping levels. A heading should describe the section under it, and where you can, phrase it as the question that section answers, because that is often the question a person will ask an engine.

Do not use headings for styling. If you want big text, use CSS. A heading that is not a real section confuses the structure, and structure is exactly what an engine reads to chunk your page.

This connects to answerability. A clear heading above a self contained passage is what lets an engine retrieve that passage as a unit. See how retrieval works. Topkay checks you have a single h1 and that headings run in order.

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Ranking pages, being the answer, being cited by models. Three jobs, not three names.

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