Does the ordering of heading tags matter?

[Blinkyman1]

My website has a h3 tag but no other h tags. Is that bad for SEO?

[DisgustingArsehole]

Let's face it, for those of us making commercial websites which depend on search engine placement, SEO comes before accessibility. It's a sad fact, but there you go. As much as I'd like to make my sites as accessible as possible for the blind, I'm ultimately going to prioritize SEO. I figure that most blind people are used to less than perfect page layouts and have learned to adapt.

[BlueBoden]

@DisgustingArsehole You could easily have both by following some basic design principles. Besides, there are in fact other factors, which are much more important then the ordering of your headers.

But still... Having a h2 before your h1 doesn't make sense, and is really just amateurish and lazy. The sectioning elements will hopefully make things easier.

[BlueBoden]

Sometimes it actually makes more sense to include multiple h1s, in cases where the content of the section isn't directly related to that of the main article.. This could be anything from Navigation links, to footers on the page.

[AppleSD2]

Only 40% have syntax errors? I would have expected the number to be more like 85%!

[pigsonthewinguk]

And here is a video explaining why heading order is important to blind people: /watch?v=AmUPhEVWu_E

[ShaneSelby]

Thanks for the link.

[wredlich]

Here's a goofy algorithm I vaguely follow sometimes: You shouldn't have more than one h tag per page per number of that h. In other words, no more than 1 h1 tag, 2 h2 tags, etc. I'm not saying it's correct, but maybe elegant? Or maybe going with the square would be better. :-)

[Jester995]

@wredlich Are you trying to tell Google what is better? I think I'll side with Google thanks.

[mrcakey]

I'd like to echo pigsonthewinguk(!!!)'s comment. Although it's not your job to be policing standards, you usually mention where something is "okay but not a good idea". I'm always trying to convince my clients that "doing it right" in terms of semantics and accessibility reaps rewards with Google and I wouldn't want them to see this!

[pigsonthewinguk]

While it may be true that badly-ordered headings don't mater to Google, they do have accessibility implications Please encourage people to follow best practice, even if you can deal with lesser quality pages. Thank you.

[tomashastings]

Google aren't the accessibility police, surely you understand that if 40% of all pages have syntax errors they are going to work around that rather than force people to code their pages properly?

@mattcutts, thanks for taking the time to answer this question, I was wondering about this one myself.

[pigsonthewinguk]

And where did I claim that they would do so?

Perhaps you don't understand the difference between "encourage" and "force".

[rdquay]

Great post, Matt... was just having a discussion in the shop about this issue the other day.