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Rule · Links and headings

Heading levels do not skip

SEO-HDG-02C3 Standard· w2

Class
C3 Standard
Weight
2
Severity on fail
minor
Applies to
the HTML Standard

Scope and evidence

Evaluated on page (P). The book marks this requirement STANDARD.

Fail conditions

Each condition has a stable code and a reason template. The evaluator fills the placeholders from observed values only; no sentence in a report is generated.

  • skipped_level

    On {url}, an <h{a}> (“{text_a}”, line {line_a}) is followed by an <h{b}> (“{text_b}”, line {line_b}), skipping a level. The HTML Standard requires each heading to be at most one level deeper than the heading before it. Google says heading order does not matter for Search, so this is a standards and accessibility finding.

The documented fix

Choose heading levels by structure, not by visual size.

Sources, quoted

These are the passages the rule rests on, stored once in the knowledge base and emitted exactly as written. A citation marked for specific conditions appears only on findings with those codes.